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Attorneys Hamah King (left) and George Washington, Jr., ca. 1961. Photo by Benny Joseph.
older brother of Otis King, was born in Texarkana in 1931 and moved into Houston's impoverished Fifth Ward - popularly known as "the Bloody Fifth" - at age ten, when the sulfur company where his father worked transferred him to Houston. The family lived in a low shotgun rent house on Lyons Avenue. Hamah enrolled at Texas State University for Negroes in 1949 and graduated in 1953. Drafted immediately into the army, King spent the next two years as an instructor in operational radar systems in El Paso and returned to attend law school at TSU in the fall of 1955. By June, 1958, King had graduated form law school, passed the state bar, and opened an office in the Prairie Professional Building above a large Weingarten Supermarket on Prairie Street.
King joined the law firm of George Washington, Jr. in the fall of 1960. Washington and King moved their offices to a renovated house across from the TSU campus where they were perfectly situated to supply support and a steadying hand to Stearns (who was King's age).
Over the next two years, Washington and King handled hundreds of civil rights cases at great personal cost to their careers and families. Although the Harris County Council of Organizations raised over ten thousand dollars for the bonds and fines of student demonstrators, it refused to pay Washington and King for their legal work.we would be grateful to hear your personal stories, suggestions and comments