Houston Bar Association

The law library the association helped found carries a piece of Houston's civil rights history. Seven lawyers and judges incorporated a library association in 1913, selling shares at $25, and the Harris County Law Library opened on October 1, 1915, on the top floor of the 1910 courthouse. It became a public institution in 1941. In 1951 Robert W. Hainsworth sued over the one-table rule that kept Black attorneys at a single table; he lost, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned his case away in November 1954, months after Brown. Since 2021 the library has carried his name.

What the plaque says

Houston Bar Association Members of the legal profession began practicing in Houston in 1837, one year after Texas gained its independence from Mexico and became a Republic. The earliest evidence of organization among the city's attorneys dates to 1870, when the original Houston Bar Association was formed. Judge Peter W. Gray was elected president of the association, whose objectives were to raise the standards of the legal profession and to purchase a law library. The organization was short-lived, however, and no records concerning its activity have been found. In 1901, fifty-three attorneys joined together to form the Harris County Bar Association, but it too ceased to exist after a few years. The present Houston Bar Association was formed on March 26, 1904. Among its early accomplishments was a campaign to build the 1910 Harris County Courthouse (present Harris County Civil Courts building) and the establishment of the Harris County Law Library in 1915. Throughout its history, the Houston Bar Association has supported programs to serve the community, including legal services to the indigent, legal education, lawyer referral services, legal publications, and other volunteer projects. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.7 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Harris County — steps away
• Harris County Courthouse of 1910 — steps away
• Christ Church Cathedral — steps away
• Old Market Square — steps away