Charlie planned out the


strategy that we followed from that time until we fi rst started to fi le suits,” Hill said. “We would think in terms of how we were going to tackle Plessy right on through law school.”7 Houston’s strategy helped


them to achieve their later successes, according to Hill. In the Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University of Missouri case in 1938, Houston secured the Supreme Court’s fi rst legal ruling requiring states to provide equal educational opportuni- ties to African Americans, and this case set the stage for the later revocation of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1954. However, Hill wrote that the “strategy to eliminate Plessy


30


During this period,


Hill worked around the clock, persisting in his eff orts to improve voting rights laws and oppose legalized segregation in employment, trans- portation, and school discrimination. All of these areas had


been restricted by Jim Crow legislation which had been strengthened by the 1902 Virginia Constitution. Hill gener- ally used arguments based on the 14th and 15th amendments of the fed- eral Constitution,11


which SPOTTSWOOD ROBINSON AND OLIVER W. HILL SR. IN THE MID-1950S.


v. Ferguson… was not a one-person operation,” but the work of many using “diff erent approaches” that took “years of planning and meticulous work.”8 After graduating from law school in 1933, Hill set up


practice in Roanoke and married Bernie Walker, a union that lasted nearly 60 years until her death in 1993. Business was slow and pro bono cases paid little or nothing. Hill resorted to waiting tables to make ends meet. By the end of the decade, Hill moved his practice to


Richmond. In 1940 he initiated the suit for the NAACP that achieved the fi rst important civil rights victory in Virginia, Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Virginia, which successfully disputed the disparity in pay between white and black teachers. In 1943, Hill and NAACP attorneys Martin A. Martin


and Spottswood Robinson formed the Richmond law fi rm of Hill, Martin, and Robinson, where they made the bulk of their income, as remuneration from the NAACP was unreliable . “While we worked with the NAACP, ‘employed’ is not


the right word,” he wrote. “Although we were supposed to be compensated, sometime, you were lucky to get expenses… We survived fi nancially on our private practice.”9 Money was no object, however, if the case involved


civil rights. “As a matter of fact,” he wrote, “if a case presented


itself involving race discrimination, we often took it regardless of whether the prospects for fee recovery were good or poor.”10


DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012


guaranteed the rights denied, to combat these discriminatory state laws.


T ey included 25 statutes enacted between 1870 and 1960, including laws prohibiting marriage between whites and blacks, separation of the races in schools, public transporta- tion, hospitals, housing, public theaters, and team sports, and voting prohibitions aimed directly at blacks. Hill served in the Army during World War II, but his


work opposing segregation put him in even greater danger. He and his family were subjected to a barrage of telephoned threats, and on one occasion a burning cross was planted outside their home. Nevertheless, Hill managed to keep his cool throughout this stormy period. “As a general rule,” Oliver Hill Jr. says, “he didn’t hold


grudges, so he could interact with even his most ardent foes and that allowed him to accomplish a lot more than he would have.”12 He was able to do this, Hill Jr. adds, “by creating con-


sensus with his peers.” MR. HILL GOES TO WASHINGTON


In 1948, Hill became the fi rst African American elected to the City Council of Richmond in 52 years, and in 1951 President Harry S. Truman appointed him to the committee on Government Contract Compliance, which enforced non- discrimination in government aff airs. During the Kennedy administration, he was appointed to the Federal Housing Administration to work on eradicating housing discrimina- tion. He continued in that position through the Johnson administration then resigned after fi ve years. T e case, though, for which he is best known, occurred a


decade earlier. MCCA.COM


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