Historical Bits & Pieces: William Henry Hastie — First Black Governor of the Virgin Islands

 

William Henry Hastie

William Hastie was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, an only child.

His father had gone to Ohio Wesleyan Academy and Howard University, and became a pharmacist, but he found the prejudice too strong and went into the United States Pension Bureau. His mother was a teacher.

Education was a driving force, and since there was no college-preparatory school for blacks in Knoxville, the family moved to Washington, D.C. so that he could get a better education. He went on to Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude at Amherst, and  graduation from Harvard Law.

Governor William Hastie may be forgotten by many here but his accomplishments bear remembering. He was a seasoned civil rights advocate before his appointment by President Harry Truman in 1946.

Subsequently, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third District in 1949. Back in the 1930s Governor Hastie served as an Assistant Federal Solicitor when he helped draft the Organic Act of 1936.

He also advised to eliminate segregation in the armed forces recommending integrated housing and mess hall facilities during World War II; Hastie resigned when it was rejected.

Subsequently, President Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948. He fought racism through the Federal courts with his former student Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.

While Governor he fostered the establishment of the Virgin Islands Corporation, which was charged with developing the industrial, commercial, mining, agricultural, livestock, fishery, and forestry resource of the islands.

Bernard Wolfman, Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard spoke highly of his Law Review colleague; remembering that Hastie was involved in many of the most important breaking cases in the early civil-rights years. He could have stood aside from the fray. He was a very quiet, extremely polite, very private person. The word for Hastie was dignity. He was not gregarious. Congenial but not convivial.

With Hastie, there was no elaboration, no pomposity, no big words. He wasn’t thin-skinned and he wasn’t self-conscious.

Hastie and Learned Hand, for instance, were judges who regarded the cases before them as their cases. They felt they had the responsibility to reach a correct decision, and the lawyers were to be their aides in reaching that correct decision. Their questions went to the heart of the matter.

Those who worked with him were enriched by having known Hastie.

Publisher’s Note: This article is reprinted in full from a previous edition to correct an editing error resulting from misinformation on the internet. St. John Tradewinds apologizes for the editing change that resulted in inaccurate historical information.