THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE BAR SPRING JOURNAL2004 IN THIS ISSUE Charles Hamilton Houston’s Legal Foundation for Dr. King page 6 Brown v. Board of Education: The State Bar Debates page 10 Women, Walter Clark, and the Law page 32 Ground to Stand On: Charles Hamilton Houston’s Legal Foundation for Dr. King 1 B Y J UDGE J AMES A. WYNN J R . AND E LI P AUL M AZUR artin Luther King was not a So, who was Charles Hamilton Houston? Perhaps the greatest sociological engineer of the twentieth century. What lawyer. But King’s debt to the law did he engineer? Brown itself. Brown was neither an ending nor a beginning; rather, Brown epitomizes the struggle for civil is no less great. Although King’s rights because few souls in America—save those like Charles Houston—could have imagined the Supreme Court’s holding 20 passionate activism carried the years earlier. Indeed, in the years preceding Brown, “a large number of social science studies warned,” and scientists and layper- civil rights movementM from American streets into America’s living room, we must not forget sons believed, “that African-Americans were permanently and inherently inferior . and that their close association with the legal revolution designed by Charles Hamilton Houston which provided the earth for whites could contaminate and weaken the white race.”4 This “wealth of science,” viewed in the context of social Darwinism, King’s vision. Fifty years ago, in 1954, Charles Hamilton Houston’s legal campaign to derail “created a situation in which strict racial segregation appeared to be socially pru- dent.”5 The Jim Crow legal regime main- de jure segregation secured its most famous victory in Brown v. Board of Education.2 One year tained this “natural order,” and African- American transgressions were met with public and private reprisals. From 1896 to later, Dr. Martin Luther King joined Rosa Parks in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and became 1954, spanning the time from Plessy to Brown, over 2,000 African-Americans were lynched.6 De jure racism did not end with a national figure in the struggle for civil rights. But, as Justice Thurgood Marshall—who Brown: For example, it was not until 1967, in Loving v. Virginia,7 that the Supreme Court struck down 16 state statutes pro- argued Brown before the Supreme Court—famously said: “We wouldn’t have been any place hibiting marriage between African- Americans and Caucasians. But the question is: How did this coun- if Charlie hadn’t laid the groundwork for it.”3 try move from lynching blacks to vindicating their rights in courts of law? Slowly, and with the help of Charles Hamilton Houston. 6 SPRING 2004 Biographical Sketch In 1895, one year before the Supreme Court issued its infamous “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson,8 Charles Hamilton Houston was born into what UNC Professor Genna Rae McNeil describes as a “jungle of patent racism.”9 At the age of 15, Houston graduated from high school and matriculated to Amherst College. The only African-American in the Amherst class of 1915, Houston was elect- ed to Phi Beta Kappa and was chosen to deliver a commencement address. In 1917, Houston was commissioned as a first lieu- tenant in the United States Army; a feat which he engineered by forming the Central Committee for Negro College Men which successfully lobbied for the establishment of an African-American offi- cer’s training camp.10 While serving in the army, Houston was almost lynched in France by American soldiers. Thereafter, he helplessly watched as one of his black con- federates’ was unjustly court marshaled. After this experience, in Houston’s own words I made up my mind that I would never get caught again without knowing something about my rights; that if luck was with me, and I got through this war, I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.11 To this end, in 1919 Houston enrolled at Harvard Law School. Despite the clear racial dividing lines at Harvard, Houston became the first African American to serve November 1939—Chief Council for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. People Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston’s academic performance was so strong, and his personality so magnetic, Working under the direction of Felix of training African-American Lawyers, like that Dean Roscoe Pound and Professor Frankfurter, Houston completed his disser- Thurgood Marshall, that “[a] lawyer [is] Felix Frankfurter—a future Supreme tation and in 1923, Houston became the either a social engineer or . a parasite on Court justice—served as Houston’s men- first African-American in the United States society.”16 For Houston, the fundamental tors, recommenders, and advisors through- to earn an S.J.D.14 Thereafter, Houston responsibilities of a social engineer includ- out his career.12 After graduating from studied civil law for one more year at the ed avoiding unnecessary racial antagonism Harvard Houston applied for a S.J.D. In University of Madrid in Spain. and understanding that the Constitution’s his application, Houston wrote: structural “inertia against amendment My reasons for desiring graduate work The Man’s Work [provided] the lawyer wide room for exper- are both personal and civic . a deep Now, despite unimpeachable qualifica- imentation.”17 For his accomplishments, desire for further study in the history of tions, Houston could not find gainful Houston was appointed dean of the law the law and comparative jurisprudence . employment anywhere in Washington, school and led Howard’s path towards full . [and the belief that] there must be DC, as an attorney. He was just another accreditation. Negro lawyers in every community . Black man without a job. Shortly, however, In 1935, Houston left Howard to serve the great majority [of whom] must Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter rec- as special counsel to the National come from Negro schools . [where] ommended Houston’s appointment as a Association for the Advancement of the training will be in the hands of Professor at Howard Law School.15 As a Colored People (NAACP). Houston Negro teachers.13 teacher, Houston implemented a program accepted the position with the NAACP “on THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE BAR JOURNAL 7 the condition that the program of litigation amalgamation are repugnant to the law whether white, brown, yellow, or black.”31 be conducted as a protracted legal struggle of nature. From social amalgamation it After Gong Lum, decided in 1927, the case based on . cases.”18 Houston opposed an is but a step to illicit intercourse, and law was crystal clear; Plessy v. Ferguson had immediate challenge to the “separate but but another to intermarriage. But to reached full maturity. equal doctrine, favoring a more methodical assert separateness is not to declare infe- So, Charles Hamilton Houston realized approach at the state and federal levels.”19 riority in either; it is not to declare one a that the Supreme Court would summarily He defended his approach on the grounds slave and the other a freeman that would dismiss any attempt to attack Plessy on its that it would: (1) “lay the groundwork for be to draw the illogical sequence of infe- four corners or in its entirety. Houston, the test cases that would ultimately come riority from difference only. It is simply using the ingenuity of an engineer, decided before the United States Supreme Court”20 to say that following the order of Divine that the NAACP would target cases in serving as the foundation for overturning Providence, human authority ought not which related issues could be decided Plessy, (2) provide the time necessary to to compel these widely separate races to destabilizing the very foundations of Plessy engage in broad and wide-ranging educa- intermix. The right of such to be free in a piecemeal fashion. For Houston, only tional efforts to change minds in the “court from social contact is as clear as to be an incremental and deliberate process of public opinion,” and (3) “allow Houston free from intermarriage. The former could generate the long term effects on time to develop competent Black lawyers to may be less repulsive as a condition, but legal precedent desired. Houston recog- ‘wage the fight that no white men could be not less entitled to protection as a right. nized that the “‘Law [is] . effective . expected to sustain.’”21 When, therefore, we declare a right to always within its limitations,” and it would Why did Houston choose not to wage maintain separate relations, so far as is be “too much to expect the court to go an immediate and direct attack on “separate reasonably practicable, but in a spirit of against the established and crystallized but equal”? Well, he knew that the Supreme kindness and charity, and with due social customs.”32 Accordingly, Houston Court would not strike down forced segre- regard to equality of rights, it is not prej- focused on areas where segregation was gation until forced segregation demanded udice, nor caste, nor injustice of any most vulnerable to attack and where segre- striking down, literally and practically. The kind, but simply to suffer men to follow gationists were unlikely to respond with moral argument, the ethical argument, the law of races established by the emphatic anger. vocalized by Dr. King, had died a slow and Creator himself, and not to compel For example, Houston chose to focus his painful death in the wake of Plessy v. them to intermix contrary to their efforts first on desegregating graduate and Ferguson. instincts.27 professional schools. By focusing on gradu- For instance, in 1899, in the case of After Berea College, states were ate and professional schools, Houston could Cumming v.