Imagine the Jim Crow world of Charles Hamilton Houston. In the 1930s, more than 20 years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Houston, a Harvard trained lawyer and Dean of Howard University's Law School set out to use the law as an instrument for social change. Houston was instrumental in developing the brilliant legal strategy that would eventually prove victorious for Thurgood Marshall and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, on May 17, 1954, the day the United States Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional. I think too many students, when they read Brown today, say, Oh gee, that's a slam dunk. How could you ever lose that case? Well I would just suggest, if they could put themselves back into 1945 and realize that you were fighting a war for democracy, but yet the entire army was segregated. When I recognized in 1949 when I was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice, I couldn't eat in downtown Washington, D.C. the changes were tremendous, and it took a lot of skill to bring that about. It was not a slam dunk. And I really think that the American people really owe the Legal Defense Fund a great debt of gratitude.