#OnThisDay 1950 Civil right freedom fighter, Vice Dean of the Howard University Law School and first NAACP Legal Counsel Charles Hamilton Houston died.

Who was Charles Hamilton Houston? Glad you asked.

While this is a long thread, if you are a Black attorney? You should MEMORIZE the history of Charles Hamilton Houston. Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and EVERY OTHER ATTORNEY bow down in respect and reverence to Mr. Houston.

Period.

Mr. Houston started legally tearing apart Jim Crow, and trained future SCOTUS Thurgood Marshall. Known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow”, 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 (Plessy v. Ferguson) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the master stroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.

Pause right here. Houston USED the very SCOTUS decision that buttressed separate but equal AGAINST ITSELF.

Born in Washington, D.C., Houston attended the famed Dunbar High School in Washington, DC then matriculated to Amherst College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1915. From 1915 to 1917, Houston taught English at Howard University.

By the way, he graduated at the top of his class.

A Black man. At Amherst. In 1915.

Carry on.

From 1917 to 1919, he was a First Lieutenant in the United States Infantry, based in Fort Meade, Maryland. Houston later wrote:

“The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”