Social and cultural critic Kevin Peterson, founder of the New Democracy Coalition and Convener of the Fanueil Hall Race and Reconciliation Project, recently devoted a blog post to celebrating the contributions of Charles Hamilton Houston, Amherst Class of 1915, World War I veterans and subsequent graduate of Harvard Law School. Peterson’s column remarked on a recent celebration Harvard Law held in honor of Houston’s birthday, Sept. 3
Houston, the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, served as a dean at the Howard University School of Law, and a mentor to a generation of African-American lawyers, most notably Thurgood Marshall.
“What becomes abundantly clear was Houston’s civic heroism and willful capacity to slay racial dragons,” Peterson wrote. "His legal work and vision laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement, which would span from the 1954 Brown V. Board of Education school desegregation victory to the late 1960s, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr."