The WBAEF Charles Hamilton Houston Essay Competition is held each year in honor of the brilliant WBA Founder Charles Hamilton Houston. Charles Hamilton Houston was one of the most important civil rights attorneys in American history. A lawyer, in his view, was an agent for social change—“either a social engineer or a parasite on society.”
Houston helped play a role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and helped train future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow”, he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Houston’s brilliant plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow segregation by using the inequality of the “separate but equal” doctrine (from the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the master stroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.
The Charles Hamilton Houston Scholarship Essay Competition is open to first and second-year law students The Charles Hamilton Houston Scholarship Essay Competition is open to all first and second-year law students enrolled in an ABA-accredited law school in the Washington DC metropolitan area, including Maryland and Northern Virginia.
Charles Hamilton Houston Essay Scholarship Winners
We are honored to present the below winners of scholarship competitions.
2021 Scholarship Winners
Mr. Alex M. Dubose of Howard University School of Law, Ms. Nina Ego-Osuala of The University of the District of Columbia David A Clarke School of Law, and Ms. Shala Barney of The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. (Pictured from left to right).
2019 FIRST PLACE
Aaron M. Ruffin
George Washington University
School of Law
2019 SECOND PLACE
Keilah Roberts
University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law
2019 THIRD PLACE
Michael Campbell
University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law
2018 FIRST PLACE
Joshua Morris
American University Washington
College of Law
2018 SECOND PLACE
Ayanna Williams
University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law
2018 THIRD PLACE
Seth L. Brown
University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law
2015 FIRST PLACE
Ebony Brown
Howard University
School of Law
2015 SECOND PLACE
Maheala Brown
Howard University
School of Law
