In December 1993, and again in December 2001, District Attorney Pamela Price received the Charles Houston Bar Association’s Clinton W. White Advocacy Award for her achievements in civil litigation. DA Price is a lifetime member of the Charles Houston Bar Association.
Justice Clinton Wayne White was born October 8, 1921 in Sacramento, California. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1946, and his LLB Degree from the Boalt Hall School of Law in 1948. Justice White lived a remarkable life and made significant contributions as one of the first African-American attorneys to practice law in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was one of the founding members of the Charles Houston Law Club. His trial skills and brash nature were legendary. He loved his community and for decades, coached the NAACP Connie Mack Baseball Team. He was appointed to Alameda County Superior Court in 1977. The next year he was elevated to the California Court of Appeal, where he served until his retirement in 1995 as Presiding Justice of Division 3 of the First Appellate District. He passed away on May 22, 2001.
Justice White’s commitment to justice and excellence inspired dozens of young lawyers to become “social engineers.”
The Charles Houston Bar Association is named in honor of Charles Hamilton Houston, the mentor and guiding light to early civil rights lawyers challenging segregation and racism, including but not limited to his most famous student, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Charles Houston graduated “cum laude” from Harvard Law School, and later served as the Director of Litigation for the NAACP.
Known in his time as the “the Man Who Killed Jim Crow,” Charlie Houston played a role in nearly every civil rights case argued before the Supreme Court between 1930 and 1954, including Brown v. Board of Education. He passed away in April 1950 at the age of 54. As the Dean of the Howard University Law School, Houston taught his students that a lawyer is either “a social engineer” or a parasite.