Charles Hamilton Houston, Lawyer, Architect of the Civil Rights legal strategy : 1895 - 1950
Law suits mean little unless supported by public opinion. Nobody needs to explain to a Negro the difference between the law in the books and the law in action. ... The really baffling problem is how to create the proper kind of public opinion.
Biography
"A lawyer's either a social engineer, or he's a parasite on society," wrote Charles Hamilton Houston. Though trained as an attorney, he proved to be a formidable social engineer, establishing the strategy that ultimately took down the legal foundations of segregation in the United States, particularly in the field of education. Houston worked in private practice and served as the lead attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was also an administrator and law professor who was instrumental in the successful effort to gain accreditation for the Howard University School of Law.
Houston, the son of William L. Houston and Mary Hamilton Houston, was born on September 3, 1895 in Washington, D.C. Houston's father, an attorney, and. his mother, a former teacher, were part of a strong middle class community in Washington when the city was a magnet for African Americans seeking top tier educational and employment opportunities. Houston benefited from these opportunities. He attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, one of the nation's top public schools at that time. Houston went on to Amherst College, where he was the only African American student in his class, finishing his undergraduate degree in 1915; he completed his LL.B. in 1922, and his S.J.D. (doctor of juridical science) at Harvard in 1923. Houston was both the first African American elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, and the first African American to earn an S.J.D at the university.
In the time between Amherst and Harvard, Houston fought in World War I. He was in the first class of African American men trained to be Army officers at Fort Des Moines, Iowa in 1917 (also the site where the first female Army officers would train during WWII). Commissioned as an infantry first lieutenant and then as a second lieutenant, he was shipped to the European theater.
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Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Friday, April 22nd 2022 at 6:22PM
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