Charles Hamilton Houston Is Responsible For Removing The Legal Enforcement Of Racial Covenants Which Violated The Constitution’s Guarantee Of The Right Of Anyone Regardless Of Ethnicity Or Religion To Freely Buy And Sell Property.
Charles Hamilton Houston litigated racially restrictive housing covenants. He was the lead lawyer in Hurd v. Hodge, the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case that undermined the legal and policy basis for excluding blacks, Jews, and other people deemed undesirable at the time from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. — Houston’s hometown. Along with Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, the court ruled that judges could not enforce these exclusionary covenants.
Charles Hamilton Houston conceived of and led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. Charles Hamilton Houston was the architect of the legal strategy that eventually led the United States Supreme Court to declare segregation in American schools unconstitutional.
Charles Hamilton Houston graduated as one of six valedictorians from Amherst (Mass.) College (B.A., 1915). After teaching for two years at Howard University in Washington, D.C., he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was commissioned first lieutenant in infantry in a segregated training unit. During World War I, Houston was an artillery officer in France. He witnessed and endured the racial prejudice inflicted on black soldiers. These encounters fueled his determination to use the law as an instrument of social change. Charles Hamilton stated that: “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.”
Following his honorable discharge in 1919, Charles Hamilton Houston enrolled at Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1922; D.J.S., 1923) where his outstanding academic record earned him a place on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, making him the first black student to be so honored. He went on to study civil law at the University of Madrid.
As vice-dean and later Dean of Howard University Law School (1929-35), Houston guided it to become the country’s premier civil rights law school, at the time training almost a quarter of the nation’s black law students — among them Thurgood Marshall.
