African American Attorney Could Get Name On Loudoun Courthouse

LEESBURG, VA — The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted to direct the county administrator to form a committee to review naming a Loudoun courthouse after Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the foremost attorneys of his generation. The committee members will include the clerk of the Circuit Court, members of the judiciary and Heritage Commission members.

The vote at Tuesday's board meeting to create the committee came at the recommendation of the Heritage Commission, an advisory body that works on preserving the county's natural and cultural heritage. As part of the process, the committee will coordinate with Howard University to consider naming either the old or new Loudoun County courthouse in Leesburg after Houston, who in 1933 became the first African American to argue a major case in a southern courtroom — at the Loudoun County Courthouse.

Houston was also a civil rights leader and educator who tought future attorneys, including future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill, who was second only to Marshall in class standing at Howard University School of Law.

For the case at the Loudoun County Courthouse, Houston represented George Crawford, who was accused of murdering a wealthy Middleburg woman, Agnes Ilsley, and her maid Mina Buckner, both white, during a trial in the historic courthouse. Crawford was found guilty but did not receive the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison.

The decision was considered to be a step forward because Crawford was a black man tried and judged by a white judge and jurors in a southern courthouse who was given a rare lesser sentence. Houston also successfully exposed the biased process of jury selection and other procedural issues as a major element of their case, according to the Heritage Commission.

"That is a staggering moment in American history that began on the Leesburg courthouse, and that ... takes my breath away," Ashburn Supervisor Mike Turner (D) said at Tuesday's meeting in support of the recommendation, according to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.. "It's such an amazing turn in U.S. history that occurred right in our courthouse."