Houston, Charles Hamilton

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Houston, Charles Hamilton 1895–1950

Charles Hamilton Houston was born on September 3, 1895, in Washington, D.C. He would go on to become one of the greatest lawyers in American history. Houston developed a systematic approach to the use of the courts to advance individual rights, and he trained a generation of lawyers to battle an entrenched system of racial oppression and segregation. Houston’s colleague William H. Hastie defined Houston as “a genius,” “the architect of the NAACP legal program,” and “the Moses” of the civil rights movement. Houston believed that lawyers were “social engineers” who had a responsibility to work for the common good. He was instrumental in revamping Howard Law School as a training ground for generations of black lawyers, and he thus created a nationwide network of lawyers who could help fulfill his mission.

These efforts created a foundation that lawyers would use to topple the system of “separate but equal” and the assumptions of many about racial inferiority. Houston’s strategic approach involved the preparation of hundreds of legal challenges to discrimination, which eventually led to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” facilities are unconstitutional. Through his life’s work, Houston exemplified an excellence of character and ability that transcended racial categories and spoke to the promise of equal opportunity and education.

Houston was born into a society in which segregation was both de facto and de jure in much of the country. Blacks and whites lived, worked, and were educated separately, either by custom or by law. Houston’s father was a lawyer who, for a time, worked as a clerk in the federal Record and Pension Office to supplement his income from the practice of law. His mother was an accomplished hairdresser whose clients included the wives of senators and diplomats. Houston’s parents had high expectations of their only son, and when he received a scholarship to attend the University of Pittsburgh they encouraged him to attend a more prestigious school. He therefore attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. While schools like Amherst and Harvard occasionally accepted blacks as students, they were not fully integrated into school organizations, and clubs and fraternities often barred their entry. As a result, Houston led a singular but not lonely existence at Amherst. He made some friends and acquaintances, but he was never fully accepted into the fabric of college life. Nonetheless, Houston distinguished himself as a student and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1915, he graduated magna cum laude and was one of the college’s six valedictorians.

After graduation, Houston taught English at Howard University, the prestigious black college in Washington, D.C. His career was interrupted by World War I, in which he served as a second lieutenant in the field artillery. During his service, Houston experienced overt racism, and he observed that in the face of discrimination, intelligence, talent, skill, and character provided little, if any, protection. Systemic racial prejudice allowed whites to belittle, threaten, humiliate, and abuse their fellow soldiers of color with impunity. Houston began to recognize the impact that legal skill and strategy could have in combating the inequities of racism and segregation. He remarked, “I would never get caught again without knowing something about my rights; that if luck was with me … I would study law, and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back” (McNeil 1983, p. 42).

In 1919, Houston enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he again experienced the stings of de facto segregation. Nonetheless, he demonstrated a keen legal mind and distinguished himself as a law student, receiving praise from his professors. Based on his academic achievements, he became the first black student elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1922, earned a doctorate in juridical science from the same institution in 1923, and then studied civil law at the University of Madrid. Houston’s pursuit of an advanced legal education was driven, in large part, by his belief that a complete understanding of the Constitution and the legal structures of the nation was essential in the fight for justice and civil rights for African Americans.

Houston joined his father’s legal practice, and from 1924 to 1929 he worked in the Washington, D.C. firm of Houston & Houston. At that time, he developed a reputation for a willingness to represent the underrepresented, despite their inability to pay. In 1924, Houston began teaching at Howard Law School, and in 1929 he became the vice-dean of the school. He helped to transform Howard from an evening program to a fully accredited law school that would become a training ground for some of the country’s greatest lawyers. He worked at Howard until 1935, when he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its first full-time salaried attorney and special counsel, and he became the “architect” of its legal civil rights program. After resigning from the NAACP in 1940, Houston returned to private practice, where he worked tirelessly against infringements on the right to work; unfair labor practices; and segregation in housing, land ownership, and transportation. He remarked to friends that his grandmother’s stories of slavery inspired him to protect African Americans against discrimination and prejudice. He also applied this fundamental belief in equality to international struggles for human rights and freedom when he protested economic imperialism in Latin America and colonization in Africa.

Houston’s work was grounded in a belief in equality in education, in lawyers as agents of social change, and in human rights. He firmly believed that discrimination in education had to be eradicated for racial equality to be possible. Houston’s strategy involved attacking racial inequities in teacher’s salaries, transportation, and graduate and professional education. He tied the inadequacy of advanced educational opportunities for blacks to efforts to impede the development of black leadership and economic development in the black community. His brilliance and success rested on his careful preparation of legal briefs and the use of the Constitution to advance equality and equal rights, and to force reforms where they could have no chance through politics. He advanced the idea of using law as an instrument to achieve equality.

The development of socially conscious and prepared lawyers was integral to Houston’s strategy of attaining racial equity in education. He believed lawyers had to use their understanding of the Constitution in “bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens.” According to Houston, the lawyer was a “mouthpiece of the weak and a sentinel guarding against wrong” (McNeil 1983). He emphasized the role of black lawyers in these efforts in particular, and he worked to strengthen the National Bar Association, which represented the interests of black lawyers at a time when nonwhites were excluded from the American Bar Association.

Houston is perhaps best known as an advisor to the first black Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall. He mentored and taught legions of lawyers and was always available for consultation in their work. Erin W. Griswold, a former dean of Harvard Law School, noted that “It is doubtful that there has been a single important case involving civil rights during the past fifteen years in which Charles Houston has not either participated directly or by consultation and advice” (Hine 1995, p. 39). Most important, however, according to Houston, was the need to “work for the social good.” Houston stressed the role of law in advancing civil rights, stating that human beings are “each equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that good governments are bound to protect these rights “without prejudice or bias” (Hine 1995, p. 39).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Greenberg, Jack. 1995. Crusaders in the Courts: Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Basic Books.

Hine, Darlene Clark. 1995. “Black Lawyers and the Twentieth-Century Struggle for Constitutional Change.” In African Americans and the Living Constitution, edited by John Hope Franklin and Genna Rae McNeil, 33–55. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

McNeil, Genna Rae. 1983. Groundwork, Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ogletree, Charles J. Jr. 2004. All Deliberate Speed, Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: W. W. Norton.

Deseriee A. Kennedy

Encyclopedia of Race and Racism