Charles Houston's Right Fight; Stand Up: The civil-rights lawyer had the vision to stare down legalized segregation.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: JED GRAHAM

Charles Hamilton Houston had already been dead for four years when the Supreme Court in 1954 unanimously ruled that "the doctrine of "separate but equal' has no place" in the field of public education.

But Houston's presence was alive in the courtroom when black Americans won their most sweeping victory in their quest for equal treatment under the law.

"When Brown against the Board of Education was being argued in the Supreme Court . . . there were some two dozen lawyers on the side of the Negroes fighting for their schools," Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall recalled in a 1978 speech honoring his old professor and mentor. "Of those lawyers . . . only two hadn't been touched by Charlie Houston. That man was the engineer of it all."

Houston's contribution was so indispensable because he'd fought the civil rights battle on many fronts. He wasn't only a great litigator, but also the ultimate team player who'd given himself to the struggle in every way possible the prior two decades. By mapping out the legal strategy that led to Brown and transforming Howard University's unaccredited law school into the training ground for the country's most accomplished black lawyers, Houston empowered the black community to stand up and claim its rights.

After his death, Houston (1895-1950) became known as "the man who killed Jim Crow," only partly for a legal record that included seven victories in the eight cases he argued before the Supreme Court. William O. Douglas, the longest-serving justice in history, called Houston "one of the top 10 advocates to appear before this court in my 35 years."

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