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School into a first-rate institution and was emerging as a top lawyer and leader in
the national Black freedom movement. Houston's acceptance of the position of
chief defense counsel for Ades greatly legitimized the case as a cause to be
supported to many movement activists. However, from Houston's point of view,
there was some risk in accepting this case. As historian Genna Rae McNeil points
out in her excellent biography of Houston, he "was putting himself on the line. The
ILD was considered too radical for a temperate liberal." Houston, after all, was
deeply involved in the NAACP's national legal work, and the NAACP and ILD had
been in conflict for several years over a number of cases, including the Scottsboro
Boys. But Houston, as McNeil reveals, was a man of rare personal integrity;
politically he was both thoughtfully cautious and open-minded, with deeply radical
tendencies. Earlier, while some NAACP leaders were furious over the ILD's role
in the Scottsboro case, Houston marched with his students in ILD-sponsored
Scottsboro support demonstrations, and helped the ILD with fundraising efforts
around the case. And in May 1933, Houston openly denounced NAACP leader
William Pick ens for the latter's intemperate criticism of the ILD defense of the
Scottsboro Boys.50
In terms of the Ades case, Houston believed that the:
real basis for the attack on Ades [was] Ades' insistence on exposing officials
with a dual standard of public morality - one for whites and one for
blacks.... They cannot stand publicity and maintain their respectability
therefore they want to remove Ades from the bar so they can rest in their
hypocrisy.^1
Therefore, when the ILD requested that he defend Ades, Houston replied that he
would be honored to do it. It would have been surprising if any number of national
NAACP leaders had stepped forward to support Ades; for Charles Houston, such a
move was entirely in character.^
Houston and his associates, primarily Thurgood Marshall, defended Ades in
U.S. District Court phase of his case before Judge Soper. In their defense they
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