William Hastie United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Born: Knoxville, Tennessee-November 17, 1904 Died: April 14, 1976 With his appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on July 22, 1950, Judge William Henry Hastie became the first African-American appointed as a federal circuit judge. He was appointed by President Harry S. Truman. Judge Hastie was raised on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee, and attended elementary schools there.1Later, his family moved to Washington, D.C., where he graduated first in his class from Dunbar High School. He went on to Amherst College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. In 1925, he graduated first in his class, with prizes in mathematics and physics. Hastie went on to attend Harvard University, receiving LL.B. and S.J.D. degrees in 1930 and 1933, respectively. He was the second African-American elected to membership on the Harvard Law Review, following in the footsteps of his friend, Charles Hamilton Houston. After receiving his law degree, Judge Hastie returned to Washington and joined the law firm of Houston & Houston. Charles Houston had recently left the firm to head Howard University Law School, where Hastie began teaching part-time. Thereafter, Hastie returned to Harvard to work on his S.J.D. degree, but was called back to Washington to work with the NAACP representing Thomas Hocutt in an early and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to desegregate the University of North Carolina.2Eventually, Hastie became a Professor, and later Dean of Howard Law School. While there, he worked with Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall (a student of Hasties at Howard), and others to develop the legal strategy that was later used in Brown v. Board of Education and other cases to overthrow de jure segregation in the United States.3 In 1933, Judge Hastie was appointed to his first federal position as an Assistant Solicitor in the Department of the Interior. Then, in 1937, seven years after receiving his law degree, Judge Hastie was appointed by President Roosevelt to a seat on the District Court for the Virgin Islands, becoming the first African-American federal trial court judge (although this was not a life tenure position), a position he held until 1939. Thereafter, Judge Hastie returned to Howard Law School as Dean, but soon left to serve as an aide to Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War. In this position, Hastie fought discriminatory practices in the military, achieving some reforms. But in 1948, Hastie resigned in protest over plans to establish a separate Officers Candidate School for Negroes. A year later, the Army adopted the position Hastie had advocated and ordered that all officer candidates, regardless of race, be trained together. Hastie returned to Howard University, where he remained until he was appointed by President Truman as the first African-American Governor of the Virgin Islands. He remained in this position until October 21, 1949, when he received a recess appointment as United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit. On July 22, 1950, pursuant to the nomination of President Truman, he received a permanent appointment to that court, the first African-American to be appointed to the United States Court of Appeals. He became Chief Judge on January 1, 1968, and assumed senior status on May 31, 1971. Judge Hastie was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1968 through 1971. He served for many years as a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and as Chair of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules. In an essay published in 1973, Judge Hastie wrote: In 1930 a few persons had planned and initiated the campaign to change the racist character of our legal order. By 1950, the black community, a substantial part of the white community, and the government of the United States had joined in support of this effort. And, in its 1950 decisions, the Supreme Court responded by making clear its willingness to reexamine the fundamental question of the constitutionality of imposed racial segregation without predisposition in favor of the rationale of Plessy v. Ferguson. The road ahead lay short and straight to the objective, an equalitarian legal order, that had been set twenty years earlier. Saint Francis of Assisi is said to have prayed: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. But at times it may be better for the Omnipotent One to give men the wit and the will to continue to plan purposefully and to struggle as best they know how to change things that seem immutable greatblackheroes/government/william-hastie/
Posted on: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 16:29:55 +0000
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