Charles Hamilton Houston

From New World Encyclopedia
Revision as of 22:07, 19 March 2007 by Jeff Anderson (talk | contribs) ({{Contracted}})


Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895–April 22, 1950) was a black lawyer who helped play a role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and helped train future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow"[1], he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Houston's brilliant plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow segregation by using the inequality of the "separate but equal" doctrine (from the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the master stroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.

Cases argued before the Supreme Court

  • Hollins v. Oklahoma
  • Hale v. Kentucky
  • Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada
  • Steele v. Louisville & Nashville RR.
  • Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen
  • Hurd v. Hodge

Legacy

Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1950 and, in 1958, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was dedicated as Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. His importance became more broadly known through the success of Thurgood Marshall and after the 1983 publication of Genna Rae McNeil's Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

Houston is the namesake of the Charles Houston Bar Association and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, which opened in the fall of 2005. In addition, there is a professorship at Harvard Law named after him. Currently, the Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, is also the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law.

External links

Further reading


Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.