William H. Hastie
William Henry Hastie ( born November 17, 1904 in Knoxville, Tennessee, † April 14, 1976 in East Norriton, Pennsylvania ) was an American jurist and the first judge of African-American on a federal court in the history of the United States. He served from 1937 to 1939 as a federal district judge and from 1946 to 1949 as governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and from 1949 to 1971 as a judge of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Third Federal District Court. In addition, he worked at Howard University from 1939 to 1946 as dean of the law school.
Life
William H. Hastie was born in 1904 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of an employee and a teacher and mother had both African American and Native American ancestors. The family moved in 1916 due to a dislocation of his father to Washington, DC. He graduated from Amherst College and in 1925 with an AB graduated, and was then initially for two years as a teacher in New Jersey. From 1927 to 1930, he then studied law at Harvard University, where he, after a temporary job as a lawyer in a law firm in Washington, DC, 1933, the promotion gained.
He then served as a professor at the law school at Howard University in Washington, DC, one of the Historically black colleges and universities counting college. There was one among other Thurgood Marshall to his students, who was later appointed as the first African American to the Supreme Court of the United States. William H. Hastie worked during this time as well as a judicial officer in the Ministry of the Interior of the United States and before different courts as a lawyer in civil rights cases, as well as the legal advisor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
During his work for the Interior Ministry, he worked together with other employees, among other things, laying the foundation of a civil administration for the U.S. Virgin Islands, for which the responsibility was passed in 1931 by the United States Navy to the Department. After the legislation to that in 1936 he was appointed the following year as a judge at the Federal District Court for the U.S. Virgin Islands and becoming the first federal judge of African-American descent in the history of the United States.
From this position he retired in 1939 back to be at Howard University, dean of the law school. In 1946 he took over, appointed by the then U.S. President Harry S. Truman, the Office of the Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Three years later he was also appointed by Harry S. Truman, a judge of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Third Federal District Court. In this role, he was the first lawyer of African-American in American history. He served on that court until 1971, including as Chief Judge from 1968, and was then put in the part-time retirement.
William H. Hastie was married from 1935 in the first and from 1945 to his second wife, and in his second marriage one son and one daughter. He died in 1976 in East Norriton, Pennsylvania. His estate was left to his children between 1979 and 1981 the law library of Harvard University. He wear in memory, among other things, the library of the Court of Appeals for the Third Federal District Court in Philadelphia, a park in his hometown of Knoxville and an established since 1973 Scholarship Program at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, by the law students of African-American descent in the context of a LL.M. - can qualify studying for an academic career, his name.