About the Program
Rawn James profiles Charles Hamilton Houston, the first African American on the Harvard Law Review and dean of Howard University Law School and his student Thurgood Marshall, valedictorian of his class in 1933 and future Supreme Court justice. The two lawyers would lead the NAACP's legal office in challenging Jim Crow laws with a focus on school integration. The author relays that Mr. Houston and Mr. Marshall's numerous legal challenges would lay the groundwork for the Supreme Court's decision on Brown v. Board of Education. On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Rawn James discusses his book at Hue-Man Bookstore in New York City.