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Photo by Benny Joseph, ca. August 1961.
in Dallas, Texas in 1929 to a sharecropper and his wife, George Washington, Jr. was the youngest of seven children. Following graduation from high school, Washington attended Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, a predominantly black institution. During these years, he closely followed Heman Sweatt's progress through the courts as he challenged the segregation policies of the University of Texas School of Law. An admirer of W.J. Durham, a powerful African American attorney with close ties to Thurgood Marshall, Washington applied for admission to the UT law school shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mr. Sweatt in 1950. He was accepted and in 1954 was the second African American to graduate from the UT law school.
Washington's law office was located across from the TSU campus. From this location he and his partner, Hamah King, were perfectly situated to provide legal support to Stearns and others involved in the Houston sit-in demonstrations, and represented
many of them when they were arrested.we would be grateful to hear your personal stories, suggestions and comments