Charles Hamilton Houston Dies: Architect of NAACP Legal Strategy Against Segregation

Charles Hamilton Houston, the Howard University law dean who trained Thurgood Marshall and designed the NAACP's long-term legal strategy to dismantle segregation, dies on April 22, 1950 at age 54, four years before his strategy achieves its greatest victory in Brown v. Board. Houston conceived the approach of attacking the inequality within 'separate but equal' systems systematically through graduate and law school cases before challenging elementary and secondary segregation. Thurgood Marshall calls him 'the man who killed Jim Crow.' His death depletes the NAACP's legal brain trust at a critical moment.