Houston, Charles Hamilton

Impact on the world

As vice-dean of Howard Law School, Houston trained the generation of lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to dismantle legal segregation, personally laying the legal groundwork that led to Brown v. Board of Education.

Life & background

A founding member of the National Bar Association, Houston served as vice-dean of Howard University Law School, where he mentored Thurgood Marshall and instilled in his students the philosophy that they should be 'social engineers' rather than mere lawyers. He personally architected the legal strategy targeting segregation's 'separate but equal' doctrine that his students, including Marshall and William Hastie, would carry to victory in the courts over the following decades.

Sources

1. National Geographic (How Thurgood Marshall became the first Black Supreme Court justice); NAACP official history (Charles Hamilton Houston); National Park Service (nps.gov/people)