Charles Hamilton Houston

“The problem before the Negro today is not the depths from which he has come but the heights to which he aspires.”
Charles Hamilton Houston, 1934

Few people recognize Charles Hamilton Houston’s name.
But we all recognize his legacy.

He was Harvard Law Review’s first black editor, Howard University’s dean of law. He was a father, a soldier, an attorney—the first black man to stand before the United States Supreme Court as a lawyer, instead of a defendant. He was chief council to the NAACP and a leading architect of the American civil rights movement.

Charles Hamilton Houston was just one man, but his dedication to fighting racial inequality from within the legal system ended a century of “separate but equal” segregation. He was truly “the man who killed Jim Crow.” And he remains the inspiration behind our work.