Quote Reflection #4: Charles Hamilton Houston (1895 - 1950)

"Without education, there is no hope for our people and without hope, our future is lost" - Charles Hamilton Houston



Who was this man? Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895–April 22, 1950) was an African American lawyer, Dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP Litigation Director who helped play a role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and helped train future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. He was educated at Amherst College, where he was valedictorian, and at Harvard Law School, where he graduated cum laude and was a member of the Harvard Law Review. Known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow."[1], he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Houston's plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow segregation by using the inequality of the "separate but equal" doctrine (from the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the masterstroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.

Need I really say more? Education is the key. Each one, teach one.

In the past, there was a sense of community. Now, there seems to be a strong sense of divisiveness and lack of passion regarding educating our wayward youth.

United we stand, divided we fall.