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Charles Hamilton Houston UCLA National Black Law Journal Title Charles Hamilton Houston Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/776794vd Journal National Black Law Journal, 3(2) ISSN 0896-0194 Author McNell, Genna Rae Publication Date 1973 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE BLA CK LA W JO URNA L PAGE 123 CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON By GENNA RAE McNEIL* and exposure to mortal danger. Injustice at home and abroad prompted a C HARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON, the decision to join his father in the practice of descendant of a line of free Blacks and law. In the summer of 1919 following his dis- slaves, was born September 3, 1895, in charge from the Army, racial violence Washington, D.C., where he lived and worked erupted in Washington, D.C., and a score of until his death at the age of fifty-four in April, other localities. Blacks were murdered and 1950. His parents were William LePre victimized. In the autumn following that Houston, a lawyer, and Mary Ethel Hamilton "Red Summer," Charles Houston entered Houston, a former teacher and hairdresser. Harvard Law School. He distinguished him- To the extent that it was within their power, self at Harvard, being the first Black to serve these two working parents provided a privileg- on the Harvard Law Review, earning his ed environment for their very capable only LL.B. ('22) with an honors average and re- child. Houston attended "M" Street High ceiving the Langdell Scholarship for further School (subsequently renamed for the Black studies. Houston earned all "A"s in his poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar), the college fourth year of law studies during which time preparatory school for Blacks in Washington, he was instructed by such men as Roscoe D.C., and the surrounding area. At the age of Pound and Felix Frankfurter.' In 1923 he ob- nineteen, he graduated Magna Cum Laude tained his Doctorate in Juridical Science and with an honors degree in English and Phi Beta was awarded the prestigious Sheldon Travel- Kappa from Amherst College. The next two ing Fellowship which allowed him to study years he taught English at Howard Univer- civil law at the University of Madrid and sity's Commercial College. At the age of sit as an observer in the courts of Spain, Italy, twenty-one Charles Houston entered the first Greece, Tunisia and Algeria. Black officers' training camp, Fort Des After Houston returned from southern Moines, where he earned his commission as a Europe and northern Africa and joined the First Lieutenant in the Infantry. The Army's District of Columbia bar, his father proudly unfair assignment of a number of Black infan- renamed the office, "Houston & Houston". try officers and disparaging reports regarding the ability of Blacks to train in the Special Services, however, offended and provoked Houston so much that he relinquished his *B.A. Kalamazoo College; M. A. University of Chicago; Candi- a field artillery date for PhD History, University of Chicago. Ms. McNeil's rank and retrained to become dissertation topic is: "Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950) officer in the American Expeditionary and the Struggle for Civil Rights." She is a former instructor of Afro-American History at Roosevelt University, and is newly Forces. As a Second Lieutenant overseas, he appointed to the faculty of the History Department, University encountered virulent racism practiced by Red of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 1. Letter from Walter White to Roger N. Baldwin, July 8, Cross workers, white enlisted men and his 1933, in 8 American Fund for Public Service: Applications fellow white officers. Because of his race and Favorably Acted Upon 135, Frankfurter commented ten years later that Houston was one of the most "brilliant and color, he suffered arbitrary insults, indignities able students at Harvard within his memory." PAGE 124 THE BLA CK LA W JO URNA L PAGE 124 THE BLACK LA WJOURNAL They went about the task of making a success out of special problems of [Black] lawyers," of what they regarded as the first Black law but also for the researching of "legal aspects firm in Washington, D.C. In addition to of [Black] economic, social and political life." building a traditional private practice, the Moreover, it should produce "capable and younger Houston began teaching at the socially alert [Black] lawyers to meet the 3 Howard University School of Law. He was group needs." There was no doubt in meticulous in the preparation of both cases Houston's mind that if Black lawyers were not and lectures, always putting forth his best ef- trained to fight for Black people, resort to the fort for clients and students. By the end of courts for vindication of rights would prove to 1924, Charles Houston's interest in the plight be more often than not an exercise in futility. of Black people involved him in the pursuit of "Experience has proved that the average two full-time careers. white lawyer especially in the South cannot be relied upon to wage an uncompromising fight "...TO WAGEAN UNCOMPROMISING for equal rights for [Black people]. He has too FIGHT..." many conflicting interests, and usually After three years as a practitioner and a himself profits as an individual by that very professor, Charles Houston found he was still exploitation of the [Black], which, as a dissatisfied with the degree to which his work lawyer, he would be called upon to attack and ' '4 was contributing to the struggle for the im- destroy. provement of the quality of Black life in the Because of the improbability of white United States. With enthusiasm, he accepted lawyers protecting Blacks with the same in- for the Howard Law School the directorship terest and vigor as they exhibit in the protec- of a survey on the status and activities of tion of white clients and an inadequte supply Black lawyers in the United States. In large of Black lawyers for the Afro-American pop- measure, the dismal facts gleaned from this ulace, Charles Houston considered it ab- study coupled with a love for and sense of duty solutely essential to offer Howard's law to his people led Charles Houston to accept students a new interpretation of the meaning the vice-deanship of Howard's Law School. In of the practice of law for a Black person in the this capacity, despite criticism, he insisted on United States. He insisted that this practice "unqualified excellence" from faculty and was more than skillful advocacy and negotia- students and worked "with singleness of pur- tion in serving individual clients in matters pose [and] unremitting drive" for the conver- pertaining to accident claims, wills and sion of the Howard Law School from an unac- domestic relations. The law "offers an im- credited evening school to a full-time, pelling challenge to leadership and service[;]" nationally known and respected school of law it offers the "privilege of piloting the race in accredited by the American Bar Association its persistent march toward full citizen- and the Association of American Law ship . .'" Houston maintained that the poli- Schools. Houston achieved in five years "a tical, social and economic condition of Black transformation which ordinarily requires a Americans necessitated a Black lawyer's generation in the history of an educational in- preparation for both anticipation and guid- stitution."2 ance of the race's advancement. To students The transformation of the institution went under his tutelage - Coyness L. Ennix, beyond the holding of day classes and full ac- Oliver W. Hill, Edward P. Lovett, Thurgood creditation. It was Houston's view that E. Marshall, James G. Tyson, and others Howard University's School of Law could in a city with seven white 2. W. Hastie, "Charles Hamilton Houston", 8 Negro History justify its existence Bull. 207 (1950). law schools only if it performed a "distinct, 3. C. Houston, "Personal Observations on the Summary of Studies in Legal Education As Applied to the Howard necessary work for the social good." The University School of Law" 1-2 (ms.) (1929). 4. C. Houston, "The Need for Negro Lawyers," 4 J. of Negro Howard Law School should provide a fertile Education 49 (1935). "educational field for [not only] the working 5. C. Houston, "Law As A Career" 3 (ms.) (1932). THE BLA CK LA W JOURNA L PAGE 125 THE BLACK LA WJOURNAL PAGE 125 - Houston commended the undertaking inequality, to integration into the society, of law as social engineering and further equal protection, equal access and equal op- 8 charged them to view the primary "social portunity. justification for the [Black] lawyer ... in the United States ... [as] the service he can THE EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN: render the race as an interpreter and propo- "LA W. .. WITHIN ITS LIMITATIONS" nent of its rights and aspirations."6 Houston's challenge did not go unheeded. To make a contented slave you must make a By the mid-thirties Howard University Law thoughtless one, . darken his moral and mental vision, and ... annihilate his power of students were beginning to move throughout reason. He must be able to detect no incon- the nation and to play active roles in the civil sistencies in slavery ...It must not depend rights' struggle. Moreover, friends and upon mere force: the slave must know no colleagues who shared his vision succeeded higher law than his master's will. Houston as top administrators of the school. -Frederick Douglass (1881) Men such as William Hastie, George Johnson Using the above passage, Charles Houston and James Nabrit molded the Howard introduced a descriptive essay and appeal for University School bf Law into the center of support of the NAACP's program against dis- legal thought and activity in work toward the crimination in public education.9 For indeed it elimination of legal obstacles to Black seemed to Houston that a new form of slavery people's freedom.
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