William Henry Hastie
William Hastie achieved a number of firsts.
▶ He was the first African American to be appointed as a federal district court judge.
▶ The first Black American to be appointed as a federal appellate judge.
▶ Hastie was also the first African American Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
William Henry Hastie was born on November 17, 1904 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of a clerk in the United States Pension Office. He spent his childhood in Tennessee until his family moved to Washington, D.C. Hastie graduated from Dunbar High School, in 1921. He attended Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he majored in mathematics. Hastie finished first in his class and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude and the class valedictorian in 1925. Following graduation, Hastie was offered fellowships for graduate work at Oxford University and the University of Paris.
He decided instead to accept a job at New Jersey’s Bordentown Manual School. After teaching for two years, he attended Harvard Law School. He was a member of the law review and graduated with an LL.B. in 1930. After passing the bar exam in 1930 he joined the law firm of Charles Hamilton Houston and his father, “Hamilton and Hamilton“. In 1933 Hastie founded the New Negro Alliance, which organized pickets and boycotts of white businesses to force increased hiring of African-Americans. He also worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to devise legal strategies to fight racism in employment, housing, and education.
During this time Hastie was appointed an assistant solicitor in the United States Department of the Interior. As assistant solicitor he advised the department on racial matters. In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Hastie to serve as a federal District Judge of the Virgin Islands, becoming the first African American federal judge. He left the Virgin Islands in 1939 to become the dean of Howard University School of Law. One of his first students was Thurgood Marshall, future Supreme Court justice. A year later he stepped down from his position with the law school in order to accept a position as a civilian aid to the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, during World War II.
Hastie was known as a very outspoken proponent of racial equality. He resigned to protest against the racially segregated training facilities, and the discriminatory practices of the United States armed forces. Hastie was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943. This was for his contributions to civil rights issues and in part to his stepping down from the War Department in protest. Hastie was appointed Territorial Governor of the Virgin Islands by President Harry S. Truman in 1946. He served as Governor until 1949. He was the first African American to hold the post of governor of a U.S. territory.
Throughout his legal career, Hastie successfully argued several major civil rights cases. In 1949, Truman once again called upon him and he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, becoming the first African-American federal appellate judge. On July 19, 1950 the Senate confirmed Hastie for the position. From there he ascended to the position of Chief Judge until he retired in 1968. It was the highest judicial position a Black American had attained at the time. After retiring from the court in 1971, Hastie devoted himself to public interest law, including programs to provide legal aid for consumers, environmentalists, and minorities.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy had considered appointing him to the U. S. Supreme Court. Due to political calculations he did not do so. The president was worried that he would not be able to get him confirmed with the racial climate at the time and the power of the Dixiecrats in Congress. Hastie would have faced fierce opposition in the United States Senate from racist senators, such as James Eastland (D-Mississippi), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.