One of the Greatest: Howard Jenkins, Jr. (1915-2003)—Mr. N.L.R.B., 0917 COBJ, Vol. 46, No. 8 Pg. 74

AuthorROBE RTO L . COR R A DA, J.

46 Colo.Law. 74

One of the Greatest: Howard Jenkins, Jr. (1915–2003)—Mr. NLRB

Vol. 46, No. 8 [Page 74]

The Colorado Lawyer

September, 2017

August, 2017

PROFILES IN SUCCESS

ROBE RTO L . COR R A DA, J.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF DENVER SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES.

The Early Years: 1915–1932

Howard Jenkins, Jr. was born in Denver, Colorado on June 16, 1915. Te son of Howard Jenkins, Sr. and Nellie Poage, Howard attended Whittier Elementary School and then Mariah Mitchell Elementary School. He was a member of the first full class to attend Cole Junior High School. He graduated from Whittier’s Manual High School in 1932.

Although segregation was not legal in Denver, Jenkins experienced discrimination and segregative practices while growing up. In elementary school, for example, he was denied the lead in a musical when it became apparent that he would be holding hands with a white girl.1 And at Manual High School in the early 1930s, social activities were segregated, with Black2 students and white students attending separate junior and senior proms.3

Despite this, Jenkins enjoyed growing up in Denver. His father, Howard Jenkins, Sr., was a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. An important influence in his son’s course in life, his father helped organize all of the Black postal workers into the first Denver chapter of the National Alliance of Postal Employees (NAPE).4 Te Jenkins family was Republican because the Democratic Party in Colorado was dominated by the Ku Klux Klan at the time. To be a Democrat and run for statewide office, for example, a potential candidate would have to visit the Klan’s headquarters in Castle Rock to get their blessing.5

College and Law School at the University of Denver: 1932–41

Howard Jenkins attended college and law school at the University of Denver.6 He had fond memories of taking undergraduate classes with Robert McWilliams, Sr. (the father of his friend Robert McWilliams, Jr., a fellow law school graduate and later Tenth Circuit judge), who was the chair of the sociology department at DU in the 1930s. Jenkins liked the fact that McWilliams had a great personality and dealt openly with the most pressing societal challenges of the era, including those pertaining to race and religion.7

During his law school years (1938–41), two professors stood out for Jenkins: Professor Gordon Johnston, then acting dean of the law school, and Professor Thompson Marsh.8 His class of 1941 graduated a number of students who would become some of the most distinguished and accomplished Coloradans.9 Jenkins recalled how Professor Johnston would take all of the graduating seniors to the mountains for two weeks for an intensive bar review after graduation.10 Everyone in his class passed the bar examination on the first attempt.11 Jenkins’s standing was particularly significant : He was the first Black person to pass the Colorado Bar Examination.12

Early Practice and Howard Law School Professor: 1941–56

Howard Jenkins, Jr. began work as a general practitioner, handling whatever came his way in the line of collections, landlord and tenant, and court-appointed work.13 Early in 1942, he was approached by some Black construction workers who had been discharged from their employment.14 Te Building Trades Council, the local construction union, had apparently pressured the general contractor to dismiss the Black workers.15 Jenkins agreed to look into the situation. After spending a weekend studying the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), he thought he might be able to make a good argument that Section 8(a)(3) of the law prohibited the general contractor’s action.16 Te matter settled in favor of the Black workers because the general contractor had never really wanted to dismiss the workers. Te union, when confronted, was unwilling to admit that it had instigated the discharge action.17 Te following year, Jenkins was appointed regional attorney of the War Labor Board.18

In 1946, Jenkins joined Charles Hamilton Houston as a faculty member at Howard Law School. When Jenkins arrived at Howard to teach labor law and administrative law, Houston had just retired as dean of the law school.19 According to Jenkins, Houston, “the most innovative Black lawyer in modern American history, had one foot in the NAACP and one foot in the Howard Law School.”20 Jenkins was immediately thrust into a milieu that lived and breathed the First, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. As he put it, “it was important for a civil rights lawyer training students for careers in civil rights to teach the Thirteenth, First, and Fourteenth Amendments. They needed a good grasp on Fourteenth Amendment concepts to understand the tension between group rights and individual rights.”21 In those days, Howard Law School was essentially the research arm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.22 Howard Law professors would portray the views of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in mooting legal arguments on their way to the Court.23

Under Houston’s tutelage, Jenkins worked on railroad cases and a case involving the desegregation of Baltimore’s golf courses.24 At the time, Baltimore had five 18-hole golf courses for whites, but only one 9-hole course for Blacks. Working with Joe Wattey, another Howard Law professor, Jenkins prepared the Baltimore golf course case. Consistent with the NAACP strategy of the day, they worked within Plessy’s separate but equal mandate. Accordingly, they spent weeks analyzing how the Baltimore courses operated and how much money Baltimore paid for the courses.25 Wattey and Jenkins finally prepared a complaint and a motion for summary judgment in the case.26

One Saturday morning, Jenkins recalled that Houston asked to see what Wattey and Jenkins had prepared. As Houston exclaimed, “there’s no such thing as separate but equal on a golf course,” he disappeared into his office and began typing.[27] Though Houston had no books with him for reference, he emerged from his office two hours later with a rewritten complaint accompanied by a full...

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