The Bar Association of San Francisco history

Growth into a Bar Association Benjamin Travis graduated as the only African American in his law school class in 1960 and promptly began working with Hiawatha T. Roberts, a member of the Charles Houston Law Club.

At Robert’s invitation, Travis joined the club in 1961 and profited from the social and professional support.

Inspired by the work of Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and devastated by their dual assassinations in 1968, members of the San Francisco Bar Association founded the San Francisco Lawyers’ Committee for Urban Affairs.

In 1973, he became the group’s president and embarked on a mission to transform the local law club into a nationally recognized bar association.

Under their leadership, the lawyers’ group gained official recognition as a specialty bar association under the State Bar of California in 1975 and became an affiliate of the National Bar Association.

The Charles Houston Bar Association, or “CHBA” as it has come to be known, was incorporated in 1976.

In April of 1977, members co-founded, along with jurists from Southern California, the California Association of Black Lawyers (CABL), the first and only statewide alliance of predominantly African American bar associations.

In 1978, CHBA members defended, pro bono, the NAACP after police officers sued the association for libel and slander.

In 1983, the association joined with other community groups to submit an amicus curiae brief to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of African-American firefighters in Memphis, Tennessee, who had been threatened by impending layoffs under an unfair seniority system.

Kamala Harris received her law degree in 1989 from the University of California, Hastings in San Francisco, where she was president of the Black Law Students Association chapter.

In 1995, CHBA joined forces with numerous community groups to oppose Proposition 209.

In 2003, Kamala Harris won election as San Francisco District Attorney, becoming the first woman and person of color elected to the position in San Francisco.

In the 2010 California Attorney General election, Kamala Harris once again made history as the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian American to hold the office of Attorney General in California’s history.