The Garden State

Q: How much "ego" do you need?
A: Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus.
Shunryu Suzuki

Four Tops - It's The Same Old Song (1966) HQ

Sentimental Fool,Am,I....

Charles Houston, American.

Charles Houston continued to work tirelessly to make America a better place.  When he saw how all-white railroad brotherhoods used their power to exclude blacks from high-paying positions, such as that of brakeman or fireman, Houston sued and finally persuaded the United States Supreme Court to recognize that unions owe a fiduciary duty to minority employees.  When he saw how racially restrictive covenants kept Negroes out of desirable residential areas, Houston sued and helped convince a unanimous Supreme Court to declare judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants a violation of the equal protection clause.  More than just a civil rights lawyer, Houston served as a publicist and champion of many causes.  He protested the decision by the Daughters of the American Revolution to bar Marian Anderson from singing in Constitution Hall, staged an integrated swim in a District of Columbia pool to protest the segregation of recreational facilities, pushed for the expulsion from the Senate of the rabid segregationist Theodore Bilbo, and filed a petition with the United Nations protesting the “national policy of the United States which permits disenfranchisement of colored people in the South.”   Houston did not limit his efforts to specifically black causes. He spoke out against the House Un-American Activities Committee and its investigation of domestic radicals and filed a petition for certorari on behalf of two leading Communists, alleging a violation of their First Amendment rights. With all these causes contending for his time, Houston still managed to teach occasionally at Howard and assist his father with his private legal practice.  When Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy, the Roosevelt appointee who had tried the Sweet cases in Detroit, died in 1947, Houston was mentioned as a possible replacement—but the honor of being the first African-American on the Court would go instead, two decades later, to his former student and close friend, Thurgood Marshall.

Frustrated by a childless first marriage, Houston had remarried in Reno in 1937 to Henrietta Williams, a former secretary to his father and ten years his junior.  The couple was overjoyed on March 20, 1944, with the birth of their first child, Charles Hamilton Houston, Jr.  Young Charles, whom Houston called “Bo,” became the center of his life.  The birth of his son seemed to inspire even greater zeal in Houston’s efforts to create a better future for American blacks.  Nothing so upset Houston as seeing his son victimized by racism. Once Houston went to a Washington drugstore with  his law partner and his son Bo. While at the store, Bo climbed on a stool by the soda fountain as Houston was being taken care of.  The man behind the counter scolded the young boy: “Get down from there you little nigger—you got no business here.”  Bo’s mistreatment so incensed Houston that, according to Joseph Waddy, Houston’s law partner and the godfather to his son, “we had to take Charlie into the back room and give him a sedative.”

The relentless procession of fourteen- to eighteen-hour days took its toll on Houston’s health.  He knew he was weakening.  In a letter to his wife Henrietta, Houston wrote: “Rest is what I need, but there is so much to do in such a short time.”  In the fall of 1949, Houston suffered sharp chest pains and was diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction.  After a period of confinement at Washington’s Freedmen’s Hospital, Houston was released in time for Christmas.  Although too weak to shop for gifts, Houston found a gift for his five-year-old son.  It was one of his own prized possessions, a large poster of a massive Scottsboro Boys protest rally in Amsterdam.  Houston’s friend and personal physician, Edward Marzique, asked Houston if he wanted to leave a taped message for Bo and others to listen to in later years.  Although only fifty-four, Houston knew he was failing and might never see his son again, having sent Bo and his mother to Louisiana to stay with relatives because he wanted his son “to remember his father as vigorous, impressive, and strong.”  Houston’s taped message reflects his view of the struggle of the black man as part of the larger struggle against oppression of the masses.  He stressed that blacks must come “to recognize their power and to apply it intelligently.”

Two months later, Houston suffered a second heart attack.  He seemed to be regaining strength when, on April 22, 1950—“a beautiful spring day”—around two o’clock in the afternoon, Houston raised his hand to greet a friend, then slumped, took a deep breath, and died in his hospital bed.  Cards and letters expressing condolences poured in from people such as President Truman, Hubert Humphrey, and Arthur Garfield Hays. Truman—who had battled Houston on issues such as desegregation of Washington’s transit system—expressed admiration for Houston’s “strength of conviction and strict integrity.”  Thurgood Marshall headed a team of pallbearers at a funeral attended by Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and Tom Clark, cabinet secretaries, black leaders, and others touched by his remarkable life.

After Houston’s death, a book found lying by his hospital bedside.  On page 148 of the book were written a few final words for his young son:  “Tell Bo I did not run out on him but went down fighting that he might have better and broader opportunities than I had without prejudice or bias operating against him, and that in any fight some fall.”

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