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Who was Charles Hamilton Houston and what was his role in shaping America?
“Without education, there is no hope for our people and without hope, our future is lost.”
Charles Hamilton Houston served as the first general counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Houston’s experience as an officer in the segregated US Army during World War I convinced him to become a lawyer. His legal work enabled Houston to demonstrate the legal fallacy behind the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. In a 1938 Supreme Court case, Houston successfully argued that, since the state offered no "separate but equal" facility for Black students, Missouri violated the US Constitution by denying Blacks admission to the University of Missouri School of Law. This decision set an important precedent for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education rulings in 1954 and 1955, which ordered states to desegregate public K-12 schools. To learn more about Charles Hamilton Houston, visit the NAACP page highlighting his life and accomplishments.
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