William H. Hastie, the First Black Federal Judge, Was a Member of Omega Psi Phi

Did you know that William H. Hastie, the first Black American to serve as a federal judge, was a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.? Hastie broke barrier after barrier across a lifetime in the law.

William Henry Hastie Jr. was born on November 17, 1904, in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he graduated from the renowned Dunbar High School. He went on to Amherst College, graduating first in his class, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1925. He then earned his law degree from Harvard Law School and joined the faculty of the Howard University School of Law.

Hastie quickly became one of the nation’s foremost legal minds in the fight for equality. He helped found the New Negro Alliance, which organized boycotts to open jobs to Black workers, and drafted a constitution for the U.S. Virgin Islandswhile serving in the Department of the Interior. In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to the federal District Court of the Virgin Islands, making him the first African American federal judge in the nation’s history.

Two years later, Hastie returned to Howard as dean of its law school, where he helped shape a generation of civil rights lawyers, including his student Thurgood Marshall. The two would later serve as co-lead counsel in the landmark 1944 Supreme Court case Smith v. Allwright, which struck down the all-white primary. Hastie also served as a civilian aide to the Secretary of War, resigning in 1943 to protest the continued segregation of the armed forces.

The barriers kept falling. In 1946, President Harry Truman appointed Hastie Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, making him the first African American to serve as the governor of a U.S. territory. Then in 1949, Truman named him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, making Hastie the first African American federal appellate judge. He served on that court for more than two decades, eventually becoming its chief judge, and was so respected that he was considered a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court.

William H. Hastie died on April 14, 1976, at the age of 71. The federal courthouse library in Philadelphia now bears his name, honoring a life that embodied the Omega Psi Phi cardinal principles of manhood, scholarship, perseverance, and uplift.