"[T]he problem before the [African American] today is not the depths from which he has come but the heights to which he aspires . . ."

- Charles Hamilton Houston, from his speech entitled "An Approach to Better Race Relations" given May 5, 1934 in Philadelphia to the National YWCA Convention.

The Charles Houston Bar Association takes its name from Charles Hamilton Houston, the innovative civil rights lawyer whose work fighting discrimination in the courts and in the community changed American history. Born in the same year Plessy v. Ferguson was argued in the United States Supreme Court, his brilliant legal career cut a clear path toward the demise of the “separate, but equal” legal principle.

Our bar association bears his name to honor his life and legacy, to provide a beacon of inspiration to our membership of lawyers, judges, and law students, and as a reminder that there is still much work to be done.

Charlie Houston: An Emphasis on Education

Charles Houston was born in 1895 in Washington D.C. to Mary Ethel (Hamilton) Houston, a hairdresser, and William Houston, a lawyer. As a young man, he attended the “M Street High School” (later called Dunbar High School), the first Black high school in the United States. As an early sign of his genius, young Charles graduated as valedictorian of his class.

In 1911, he entered Amherst College in Massachusetts on a partial scholarship. There, he joined the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Inc., and earned the distinction of becoming a "Bond Fifteen" Scholar. At the end of his college studies, he graduated magna cum laude as one of six valedictorians in the class of 1915. He was only 19 years old.

Leaving Massachusetts, Mr. Houston returned to Washington D.C. to teach English at Howard University.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he enlisted into the army commissioned as an officer. He served abroad in France and in Germany, returning to the United States after two years of service.

Upon his return, and inspired by a criminal case handled by his father, he applied and was accepted into Harvard Law School.

At Harvard, as he had done throughout his schooling, Mr. Houston excelled. He was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated in the top 5 percent of his class, earning an LL.B degree, cum laude. Future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter would one day describe him as one of the most brilliant students he ever taught.

After his 1922 law school graduation, he went on to obtain an S.J.D. degree from Harvard. Thereafter, his studies continued in Europe where Houston studied civil law at the University of Madrid, Spain, pursuing a doctorate in civil law.

Charles Houston was admitted to the Washington D.C. bar in 1924.

Training Black Lawyers: Diversity in the Legal Profession

Charles Houston joined the faculty at Howard Law School in 1924, and soon ascended to become its vice-dean (1929-35). During his tenure, Mr. Houston sculpted the institution into a legal powerhouse, training almost a quarter of America's Black law students. By 1931, the full-time legal program he instituted had received accreditation from both the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. The success of his law school program is evident from the work and accomplishments of the great legal minds it produced. Mr. Houston was a teacher and mentor to many of the great civil rights defenders of the 20th Century. These celebrated figures include Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Speaking of his law school years at Howard, Justice Marshall recalled how Professor Houston continually demanded excellence from his students. "In our first year, [Houston] told us, ‘Look at the man on your right, look at the man on your left, . . . and at this time next year, two of you won’t be here.’” With admiration, the students secretly referred to Mr. Houston as “Iron Shoes and Cement Pants” because of his demanding curriculum and high expectations.

Under Houston’s direction, Howard Law School became the training ground for African-American lawyers. It equipped them with both the skills and ambition to successfully battle discrimination.

Social Responsibility: Working within the Legal System to Fight for Equality

Between 1935 and 1940, Houston served as the first full-time salaried Special Counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As special counsel, he crafted the strategy to end legal segregation, winning cases before the United States Supreme Court that chipped away at Plessy v. Ferguson. Between 1935 and 1948, he argued 8 cases before the United States Supreme Court, winning 7 of them.

His first victories occurred in University of Maryland v. Murray and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada. In those cases, the high Court held it unconstitutional for states to exclude African-Americans from the state law school when, under the “separate but equal” principle, no comparable school for Blacks existed.

Houston's work overturned death sentences in criminal cases where his clients had been denied fair jury trials. In these cases, African Americans had been systematically and arbitrarily excluded from the juries on account of their race. (Hollins v. State of Oklahoma (1935) 295 U.S. 394; Hale v. Kentucky (1938) 303 U.S. 613.)

In 1940, Houston became general counsel of the International Association of Railway Employees and the Association of Colored Railway Trainmen and Locomotive Fireman. Soon thereafter, he found himself again arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases involving racial discrimination in employee unions. (Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad (1944) 323 U.S. 192; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (1944) 323 U.S. 210.)

In Hurd v. Hodge (1948) 334 U.S. 24, certain houses in the Washington D.C. area were subject to a covenant which forbade the lots from being “rented, leased, sold, transferred or conveyed unto any Negro or colored person, under a penalty of Two Thousand Dollars.” Houston’s client, an African-American, purchased one of these houses and was sued. The lower courts upheld the covenant and ordered Mr. Houston’s client to move out of his purchased home. On review before the United States Supreme Court, however, Houston persuaded the Court that the Civil Rights Act prohibited the courts from enforcing such racist restrictive covenants.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt apppointed Houston to serve as a member of the Fair Employment Practices Committee. But Houston resigned the following year in protest when the White House refused to issue an order outlawing racial discrimination in the Washington D.C. public transit system.

It is around this time that Houston began work on a case called Bolling v. Sharpe, which would become one of the companion cases to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 347 U.S. 483, the famous U.S. Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation. Houston’s work had paved the way for America’s biggest courtroom victory against discrimination. The NAACP acknowledged his extraordinary contributions by awarding him the prestigious Spingarn Medal.

Among his many roles in legal circles and in the community at large, Houston served on the boards of the National Bar Association (of which the Charles Houston Bar Association is an affiliate), the Washington Board of Education, the National Lawyers Guild, and the American Council on Race Relations.

Due to health problems, Houston resigned as chief counsel of the NAACP. His former student, Thurgood Marshall, succeeded him.


Not Forgotten

Houston died on April 22, 1950, in Washington D.C. at age 54. His body was laid to rest at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. Demonstrating their profound respect for attorney Houston, five Supreme Court Justices attended his funeral.

Five years after his death, a small group of African-American lawyers in the Bay Area (northern California) also sought to honor him. This group called themselves the Charles Houston Law Club, a small collective that was to steadily grow into the present-day Charles Houston Bar Association.


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