29 Days of Excellence: Day 10 - Charles Hamilton Houston
Charles Hamilton Houston is referred to as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow.” A lesser-known leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Houston, was a great legal strategist and played a key role in every Supreme Court case between 1930 and the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Leading the NAACP’s legal team, he took apart Jim Crow by testing the “separate by equal” doctrine in the courts. Houston was influenced by his negative experience in Jim Crow military camps while serving as a soldier in World War I. After he returned to the US in 1919 and the witnessed ongoing race riots, he made the decision to fight racial injustice.
Houston graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School where he also served on the Harvard Law Review. He later taught at Harvard Law School where he taught and became a mentor to Thurgood Marshall.
