William Hastie

William Hastie was born on November 17, 1904 in Knoxville, Tennessee. He graduated as his high school valedictorian in 1921 and went to attend Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he majored in mathematics. He graduated first in his class and valedictorian in 1925. After teaching for two years in Brodertown, New Jersey, Hastie attended Harvard Law School where he was a member of the law review and graduated in 1930.

After passing the bar exam in 1930, Hastie joined the law firm of Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston, who ran his law firm along with his father, was also the Dean of Howard University Law School in Washington, DC. In addition to becoming a partner in the firm, Houston persuaded Hastie to become a professor at Howard Law School. He taught at the Law School until 1946 and one of his first students was Thurgood Marshall (the future first African American Supreme Court Justice).

Hastie was one of the founding members of the Washington, DC chapter of the New Negro Alliance. The Alliance believed in the motto “Don’t buy where you can’t work.” One of his first prominent cases was New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. A local court issued an injunction against blacks who were picketing against chains stores in black communities which only hired white employees. Hastie lost in a lower court and an Appeals Court ruling, the case eventually went to the US Supreme Court where it was overturned due to the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The court ruled that “peaceful and orderly dissemination of information by those defined as persons interested in a labor dispute concerning 'terms and conditions of employment' in an industry or a plant or a place of business should be lawful; that, short of fraud, breach of the peace, violence, or conduct otherwise unlawful, those having a direct or indirect interest in such terms and conditions of employment should be at liberty to advertise and disseminate facts and information with respect to terms and conditions of employment, and peacefully to persuade others to concur in their views respecting an employer's practices.”

In 1933, Hastie was appointed to Assistant Solicitor. He advised the federal government on racial matters and was asked to draft legislation related to the US Virgin Islands. He drafted the Organic Act of 1936, which established a fully elective legislature in the Virgin Islands and allowed for residents to vote regardless of their property, income, or gender. Hastie was then appointed by President Roosevelt as District Judge in the Virgin Islands, making him the first African American Federal judge. Although the appointment was for a four year term, Hastie resigned to take over as the Dean of Howard Law School in 1939.

A year later, Hastie stepped down from his position with the law school in order to accept a position as a civilian aid to the Secretary of War. He was brought in to help in advising on ways to eliminate segregation within the armed forces, especially within the Army Air Force. Despite his efforts, segregation was still being employed in training facilities and there was inequality in the assignments given to black and white servicemen. He eventually resigned his position.

Hastie fought against racism in major federal lawsuits with Thurgood Marshall. In Smith v. Allwright, they challenged the 1923 Texas state law that authorized a political party to establish its internal rules; the Democratic Party required all voters in its primary to be white. Texas had used poll taxes and the white primary to exclude blacks, Mexican Americans, and other minorities from voting. The case made it to the US Supreme Court and the Court ruled that the restricted primary denies equal protection under the law according to the Fourteenth Amendment. “By delegating its authority to the Democratic Party to regulate its primaries, the state was allowing discrimination to be practiced, which was unconstitutional.”

In 1946, Hastie and Marshall worked together in Morgan v. Virginia. Chapter 161S of the Code of Virginia required racial segregation on commercial interstate buses. Irene Morgan was riding a Greyhound bus to Maryland when was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. Instead of relying upon the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Hastie and Marshall argued that the law violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the constitution. The Supreme Court ruled that, due to the Interstate Commerce Clause, state laws cannot regulate commercial intestate passenger travel.

After winning his case, Hastie was nominated by President Harry S. Truman to serve as the Governor of the Virgin Islands. He became the first black Governor of any United States territory. In 1949, President Truman appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, where he served until 1968. He then took the position of Chief Judge until he retired in 1968. President Kennedy had considered appointing him to the US Supreme Court but worried that he would not be able to get him confirmed with the racial climate at the time.

William Hastie died on April 14, 1976 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Before his death, Yale University gave him an honorary degree stating; “Your work has earned the admiration of your peers. Skilled and creative in your employment of legal knowledge, sensitive arbiter of social conflicts, you speak for the finest tradition of Anglo-American law.”