Root and Branch

Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation

By Rawn James, Jr.

The stirring history of the legal fight to end segregation, and the unlikely partnership of legal pioneers Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston

Although widely viewed as the beginning of the legal struggle to end segregation, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Brown v. Board of Education was in fact the culmination of decades of legal challenges led by a band of lawyers intent on dismantling segregation one statute at a time. Root and Branch is the compelling story of the fiercely committed laywers that constructed the legal foundation for what we now call the civil rights movement.

Charles Hamilton Houston laid the groundwork, reinventing the law school at Howard University (where he taught a young, brash Thurgood Marshall) and becoming special counsel to the NAACP. Later Houston and Marshall traveled through the hostile South, looking for cases with which to dismantle America's long-systematized racism, often at great personal risk. The abstemious, buttoned-down Houston and the folksy, easygoing Marshall made an unlikely pair—but their accomplishments in bringing down Jim Crow made an unforgettable impact on U.S. legal history.

Advance Praise for Root and Branch:

“With deft portrayals of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall and captivating accounts of the cases they were involved in, Rawn James, Jr. brings back to our attention two central figures in the nation’s efforts to use constitutional law to confront and overcome our history of segregation and racism.”—Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

“Rawn James, Jr.s’ moving and gracefully written Root and Branch reconstructs one of the most influential collaborations in American history. With artful prose and careful scholarship, James documents how Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall—first as teacher and student, and later as trusted friends and colleagues—spearheaded the NAACP's epochal legal assault on Jim Crow.”—Raymond Arsenault, author of Freedom Riders and The Sound of Freedom

Media for Root and Branch:

There was an Op-Ed by Rawn James Jr. posted on History News Network and linked also toUSA Today, and the Dallas Morning News.

Rawn will tape an interview with WATR Radio in CT on May 5th.

Look for a great feature on Rawn and Root and Branch in The Waterline, the Navy's free weekly newspaper, circulated around the Pentagon and other DC area military bases.

"His goal was to write something that would appeal to legal buffs and regular folks, and he certainly achieved that. James puts a humanizing face on a pivotal time that changed race relations in the United States."—Roll Call

"In his new book Root and Branch, Rawn James Jr...has done an outstanding job in recounting the tale...makes for compelling reading...James's book makes a valuable contribution to our collective remembrance of two extraordinary lawyers."—Washington Lawyer