page_title: William H. Hastie
section_title: Legal career
hierarchical_section_title: William H. Hastie / Legal career
caption_attribution_description: Scope and content: Honorable William H. Hastie - with biographical paragraphs.
context_page_description: William Henry Hastie Jr. was an American lawyer, judge, educator, public official, and civil rights advocate. He was the first African American to serve as Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, as a federal judge, and as a federal appellate judge. He served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and previously served as District Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
context_section_description: Hastie entered the private practice of law in Washington, D.C. from 1930 to 1933. From 1933 to 1937 he served as assistant solicitor for the United States Department of the Interior, advising the agency on racial issues. He had worked with Charles Hamilton Houston, former dean of the Howard University Law School, on setting up a joint law practice.
  In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Hastie to the District Court of the Virgin Islands, making Hastie the first African-American federal judge. This was a controversial action; Democratic United States Senator William H. King of Utah, the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary called Hastie's appointment a "blunder."
  In 1939, Hastie resigned from the court to become the Dean of the Howard University School of Law, where he had previously taught. During his tenure as a legal professor at Howard University, Hastie had become a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. One of his students was Thurgood Marshall, who led the Legal Defense Fund for the NAACP and was appointed as a United States Supreme Court Justice.
  Hastie served as a co-lead lawyer with Thurgood Marshall in the voting rights case of Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), in which the Supreme Court ruled against white primaries. One of Houston's sons became a name partner at their law firm.
caption: Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943
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