Read on Twitter
This is a limited obituary for someone who made a major contribution to civil rights history, Harold Kahen, who died a year ago. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/harold-kahen-obituary?pid=195842940
In 1945, as an NAACP coalition of lawyers and academics were gearing up to challenge racial covenants, two law review articles came out pointing the way forward for the legal case that would break through what seemed like a strong 1926 precedent in Corrigan v. Buckley.
Courts had cited Corrigan again and again in ruling that covenants were private contracts and courts could not touch them. Kahen, a UChicago law grad and SEC lawyer, and Dudley McGovney, a California law professor, each published articles making two key points.
First, that since Corrigan was a DC case, the court had not ruled on 14th Amendment protections, which applied to the states, not the district. Second, that court -ordered enforcement of covenants was a state action, ie they weren't just in the private realm.
Kahen sat in on some key NAACP conferences to plan strategy with Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Robert Weaver, who all worked to build a research case against covenants. They thought the S. Court would respond to law review + journal articles, not just briefs.
They tried to make these arguments in Mays v. Burgess, but the Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in 1945. Houston and Marshall were ushering a few cases forward and a St. Louis attorney, George Vaughn, filed for the Shelley v. Kraemer.
Marshall and Houston had a testy relationship with Vaughn, but they jumped in and also filed for Sipes v. McGhee, Hurd v. Hodge, and Hurd v. Urciolo (sooner than they wanted to), which were all heard together.
Vaughn wanted to make the case on the 13th amendment, that inability to purchase property was in effect a continuation of bondage and servitude. Marshall and Houston made the case on the 14th amendment and state action, and used the logic of Kahen and McGovney.
The 14th amendment logic carried the day and the Court ruled that covenants were unenforceable in 1948. Kahen was a figure who played a role at the turning point and then, it seems, just outlived his reputation. A "runner whom renown outran," in the words of AE Houseman.
But Kahen deserves a longer obituary than the one line he got and longer than this thread, and longer than the references he gets (see @professyr's Unjust Deeds on the covenants cases). @UChicago should recognize his work and life, and hell, @NYTObits could do worse.
