By Kevin C. Peterson

American society has always benefited from those social entrepreneurs who are creative and courageous enough to expand the culture's identity and chart its positive directions.

Charles Hamilton Houston was such an American, and at the recent opening of an institute named after him at Harvard Law School, it became clear to many that his role as a legal activist proved pivotal as the nation sought civic maturity during the middle years of the last century.

Houston, an African-American, was a visionary litigator and gifted above many as a professor of law.

Among his achievements was his success at transforming the all-black Howard Law School from the ranks of mediocrity and into a leading American institution of training. This was no easy feat during the 1930s. Racial antipathy in the nation then ran high and was punctuated by weekly lynchings. The confidence that blacks could competently function in the precincts of the professional occupations was low.

But Houston was persistent. His vigilance was measured in proportional relation to his high confidence and lofty ambition.

As vice dean of the law school, Houston produced a cadre of exceptional African-American lawyers. During his tenure he was singularly responsible for producing nearly a quarter of the nation's black law students.

These future lawyers would function as the team challenging the distinctive and layered forms of institutionalized racism or what the historian John Hope Franklin called "America's racial depravity."

Standing out among Houston's students was Thurgood Marshall who would embrace Houston's tenacity. Marshall also adopted the teacher's belief that the foolishness of racial segregation could be subjugated by the logic of law and that where true democracy existed bigotry is a canard. Marshall would go on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice and cite Houston as a legal mentor.

The prospects that Houston would emerge as a leader possessing the capacities to change society were evident early.

By 19 he graduated from Amherst College as one of its valedictorians and was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After serving in World War I, Houston would entered Harvard Law School and became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

At law school Houston's professor Felix Frankfurter called him one of his most "brilliant" students. Frankfurter later served on the U.S. Supreme Court to which Houston would present cases.

Houston's work as legal pioneer was definitive and resulted in a turning point in American law in the 20th century. With the law as his tool, he was committed to social "probing" as a means of breaking down social barriers. He felt the law could be used to shape culture and the courtroom was a place to foster the kind of jurisprudence that would mold moral and social sentiment.

Convinced with this strategy, Houston spent his career engaged in litigation, arguing before the Supreme Court nearly a dozen times, more than any African-American had at the time.

The result of his labors provided the blueprint for the fight against school desegregation. Houston was the master designer of the multiple legal challenges that culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954.

The Houston Institute was created by Harvard Law professor Charles Olgletree who lauds Houston as a first-rate academic and legal practitioner.

The inaugural event this fall featured a host of friends, admirers, family, students, educators, and former colleagues of Houston, who died at 54, nearly five years before the Brown decision.

Those who gathered in his name reflected on Houston's Herculean contributions and his role in the development of American jurisprudence. Olgetree called him an American "treasure."

In an age where heroes are so often identified in light of their popular appeal in the marketplace of material excessiveness, Houston represents a special kind of citizen whose social commitments reflected a mode of charity intended only to make the nation better.

Kevin C. Peterson is a columnist for the Reporter Newspapers.