1950

June
In Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), the Supreme Court holds that the University of Texas Law School must admit a black student, Heman Sweatt. The University of Texas Law School is far superior in its offerings and resources to the separate black law school, which had been hastily established in a downtown basement. The Truman Administration’s Justice Department files a brief asking the Court to directly overrule Plessy v. Ferguson, but the Court declines, simply holding that Texas failed to provide separate but equal education. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950), the Court invalidates the University of Oklahoma’s requirement that a black student, admitted to a graduate program unavailable to him at the state’s black school, sit in separate sections of or in spaces adjacent to the classroom, library, and cafeteria.

Year: 
1950
Decade: