The Man Who Killed Jim Crow

Charles Hamilton Houston is among the most remarkable unsung heroes for many reasons.

The man who killed Jim Crow became his honored moniker for life, short as it was.

Houston was the mentor for Thurgood Marshall, the trailblazing civil rights attorney who overturned Brown v. Board of Education and kicked open the door for equal education for all.

Consider the remarkable trajectory of his amazing life.

Born on September 3, 1895 in Washington, D.C., his father William Le Pre Houston was a Washington, D. C lawyer for more than 40 years. His mother was a teacher turned seamstress.

Houston was uniquely qualified for what would become his mission in life.

Early education

Houston attended M Street High School (now Dunbar High School then considered the best high school for blacks in the nation) in Washington, D.C. He graduated from high school at the age of 15.

College

He attended segregated schools in Washington, D.C. and Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was the only Black student in his class at Amherst. 

Post-war education 

• Attended Harvard Law School

• Graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School

• Served as the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review

• Studied at the University of Madrid in Spain

• Admitted to the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C.

Houston's experiences in the military from 1917 to 1919 and his education at Amherst and Harvard Law School helped shape his commitment to using the law to fight social injustice. He became a leader in the civil rights movement and played a key role in dismantling Jim Crow laws, thus earning his lifelong moniker. 

Houston taught at Howard University for two years before Thurgood Marshall enrolled at the law school. By then he had begun preparing to challenge Jim Crow laws in the 1930s.

It was not until 1954 when the Supreme Court handed down the verdict he had diligently fought for.

Sadly, Houston died in 1950 of a heart attack, and never lived to see the fruitage of his hard work. He was 54.

The first general counsel of NAACP, Charles Hamilton Houston exposed the hollowness of the "separate but equal" doctrine and paved the way for the Supreme Court ruling outlawing school segregation. The legal brilliance used to undercut the "separate but equal" principle and champion other civil rights cases earned Houston the moniker "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow."

The genius

However, it was in the fight against school segregation that Houston came up with the clever argument that would make him famous. His ingenious legal strategy was to end school segregation by unmasking the belief that facilities for Blacks were "separate but equal" for the lie it was.

As dean of the Howard University Law School, Houston expanded the part-time program into a full-time curriculum. He also mentored a generation of hundreds of young Black lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to become a United States Supreme Court justice.

Oliver Hill, born in Richmond, Virginia, attended Howard University and Howard University Law School where he graduated salutatorian in the same year that his close friend Thurgood Marshall graduated as valedictorian. As a lawyer in Virginia, he allegedly filed more civil rights lawsuits in that state than the total filed in all other Southern states during the Jim Crow era. Additionally, The Washington Post estimated that Hill’s team was responsible for winning more than $50 million for African American students and teachers in higher salaries, new buses and better schools.

In 1940, Hill secured his first civil rights victory in Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Va. that mandated equal pay for African American and white teachers. In 1948, Hill and Spottswood Robinson filed dozens of cases against school districts throughout the state, with as many as 75 pending at one time. Hill also argued Davis v. School Board of Prince Edward County a lawsuit on behalf of students protesting terrible conditions at their segregated high school. This became one of five cases decided under Brown.

John W. Davis was an attorney who argued against Thurgood Marshall in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. 

John W. Davis

John W. Davis was the lead attorney for South Carolina. A graduate of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, Davis was one of the most distinguished constitutional lawyers in the nation. He had participated in more than 250 Supreme Court cases and appeared before the Court some 140 times. He had been a congressman from West Virginia, the U.S. Solicitor General, ambassador to Great Britain, and in 1924 the Democratic presidential candidate against Calvin Coolidge. In private practice in 1954, he took the case without accepting a fee. An intelligent and elegant advocate for segregation, he died a few months after the decision in Brown vs Ferguson.

It is difficult today to imagine the charisma wielded by Marshall’s legal opponents.  The John Davis and the best legal team he could muster from South Carolina against a so-called ragtag smattering of black attorneys from Howard University.

But against all odds, when the dust settled, Marshall had won. Down came barrier after barrier until all across the land, children were entering public schools, colleges and universities and learning what had previously been illegal.

Houston had thus killed Jim Crow.