having trained and mentored a generation of [Black] attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall... the first Black Supreme Court Justice. He recruited young lawyers to work on the NAACP's litigation campaigns, building connections between Howard's and Harvard's university law schools. (3/33)
Biography Early years …His father William Le Pré Houston, the son of a former slave, had become an attorney and practiced in the capital for more than four decades. Charles' mother, Mary (born Hamilton) Houston, worked as a seamstress. Houston attended (4/33)
segregated local schools, entering M Street High School... at the age of 12 and graduating at age 15. He studied at Amherst College... and graduated as valedictorian in 1915 at the age of 20, the only [Black] student in his class. He returned to D.C. and taught [english] (5/33)
at Howard University... As the U.S. entered World War I, Houston joined the U.S. Army as an officer. The military was racially segregated. From 1917 to 1919, he served as a First Lieutenant in the United States Infantry,... with service in France. After being (6/33)
chastised for, during a brief detail as a Judge Advocate, finding a Black sergeant not worthy of prosecution, Houston wrote later: The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was (7/33)
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. After his return to the U.S. in 1919, he entered Harvard Law School. He was the (8/33)
first [Black] student elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review and graduated cum laude… He earned a bachelor's of law in 1922 and a S.J.D. from Harvard in 1923. That same year he was awarded a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship to study at the University of (9/33)
Madrid. After his return, he was admitted to the Washington, DC bar in 1924 and joined his father's practice. Career When several [Black] lawyers were refused admission to the American Bar Association in 1925, they founded the National Bar Association... …From 1929 to (10/33)
1935, Houston served as Vice-Dean and Dean of the Howard University School of Law. He developed the school, beginning its years as a major national center for training [Black] lawyers. He extended its part-time program to a full-time curriculum and gained accreditation (11/33)
by the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association. Bringing prominent attorneys to the school as speakers and to build a law network for his students, Houston served as a mentor to a generation. (12/33)
He influenced nearly one-quarter of all the [Black] lawyers in the United States at the time…. Houston believed that the law could be used to fight racial discrimination and encouraged his students to work for such social purpose. Houston left Howard in 1935 to serve (13/33)