Sweatt vs. Painter Essays

The first point of evidence in the fight for equality is the importance of Selma, AL to the rights movement. More specifically the march made by so many negroes from Selma to the state capital. “That March, protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities. As the world watched, the protesters (under the protection of federalized National Guard troops) finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery.” (History.com, 2010). This historic march, and the participation of Martin Luther King Jr, helped to immensely raise consciousness of the difficulty faced by negro voters in the South and also urgency for a Voting Rights Act which was passed later in the year.

In 1974, Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ruled that the schools were unconstitutionally segregated (Weinbaum). He ordered Boston to desegregate in all public schools by forced busing. This new plan forced students from white neighborhoods to go to school in black neighborhoods, and forced students black neighborhoods to go to school in predominantly white neighborhoods to balance the racial diversity. However, this ruling was highly unpopular among the White Americans who were still in favor of segregation. A series of protests began to follow soon after the desegregation orders, but the most significant protest would be captured in a series of snapshots.

It is important to note that Salvatierra won the first initial case however, the school district appealed, and then the case went to the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Under the Texas constitution of 1876, under Article seven, section seven it specifies, “Separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored children, and impartial provision shall be made for both.” The Texas State Historical Association described that the plaintiffs argued that although the Texan constitution allowed for

One of these cases was Smith v. Allwright. The outcome of this case declared that Texas' exclusion of black voters from primary elections, known as the "White Primary", unconstitutional. By winning this case Marshall not only paved the way for the removal of black voting laws, but he also made it public that the Supreme Court was no longer going to ignore the constitutional rights of African Americans, that had been discounted by state legislatures since the Civil War. In yet another governmental policy altering case Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948 the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall that courts could not enforce "restrictive covenants," private agreements not to sell land to blacks. (3) This time Marshall directed a blow at the state level courts, forcing them to become aware of the nation's new found view of civil liberties. In Sweat v. Painter in 1950 and in Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma in 1948, Marshall won unanimous decisions declaring "separate but equal" facilities for black professionals as well as graduate students in state universities unconstitutional. (3) First the state

The initial incident leading to the case took place at The University of Texas Law School. Herman Sweatt registered in 1946 to no avail. The postal worker, with the assistance of the NAACP, managed to reach the United States Supreme Court with the case. By 1950 the court reached a decision in favor of Herman Sweatt. Despite the victory, it was only a small step toward the complete integration of public schools. (Morris)

The 1960s had arrived, and equality in theory was being achieved, but it was still not being practiced in reality. As mentioned earlier in Sweatt v. Painter, various leaders such as Antonio Maceo Smith, Carter Wesley, and John J. Jones sued the University of Texas because of the denial of admission to Texas Law School. The Supreme Court ruled that Sweatt can attend the University of Texas, which meant integration. It was in ways similar to Brown v. Board where they ruled segregated schools were unequal, which led to being unconstitutional.

Background: The University of California used racial quotas to reserve 16/100 seats for "Blacks, Chicanos, Asians, and American Indians." Bakke's scores were much higher than any members of these racial groups who were recently admitted. Bakke's application was rejected twice, so he sued the University. He argued that the University's policy violated the Constitution, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection clause.

In 1945, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was brought to the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who represented the African Americans, won the case. The Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Although these decisions were established, some schools in the South still did not allow African Americans into their schools. A plan was made by the Little Rock, Arkansas school board to gradually integrate the schools (2, page 1). There were two pro-segregation groups that assembled to protest against the plan. These groups were the Capital Citizens Council and the Mother’s League of Central High School. Even though this opposition took place, nine African American students registered at the Arkansas Central High School for the very first time in

Thurgood represented Murray in this decision where he argued that then he was as qualified as other white students who were admitted into the same school. He argued that the criteria used in admitting students was discriminating and the student did not have another institution to pursue his career. He further argued that failure to admit him was going against his right to education. The challenge of the Maryland’s decision was before the Baltimore City Court. The Baltimore City Court decided in favor of Maryland. Maryland appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeal and the court upheld the decision. The continued fight by NAACP Legal Defense took the case of Missouri exparte Gaines v. Canada. The Missouri school of law offered Gaines an option of being admitted into the school of the blacks that they intended to build. He was also given an option of attending another school whereby his fee was to be paid by the school. Gaines rejected the said offers. His decision reached the Supreme Court, which held in his favor. The Supreme Court cited the equal protection clause. The subsequent decisions were founded on the decision in Murray. The legal battle reached its peak in the

In 1994, a new case, Hopwood v. The University of Texas, was ruled on by the circuit court and interpreted in such a manner as to effectively end affirmative action in higher education for the states of Texas and Louisiana. The plaintiffs for the case were four applicants to the law school of The University of Texas, each of whom were denied admission while minority applicants with lower

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Earl Warren argued that the question of whether racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and thus beyond the scope of the separate but equal doctrine, could be answered only by considering “the effect of segregation itself on public education.” Citing the Supreme Court’s rulings in Sweat v. Painter (1950), and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (1950), which recognized “intangible” inequalities between African American and all-white schools at the graduate

Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma, brought Jim Crow to trial once again. The Sweatt v. Painter case involved a black man by the name of Heman Marion Sweatt, who was refused admission to the University of Texas Law School. When Sweatt asked the state courts to order his admission, the university attempted to provide separate but equal facilities for black law students by creating a completely new school. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and served as an influential landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education years later. Another Supreme Court case was McLaurin v. Oklahoma, which denied George W. McLaurin admission to the University of Oklahoma graduate program in education. However, they were not allowed to deny McLaurin a place in the school but tried to segregate him on campus. He had to sit by himself in a separate section of the classroom, sit at a separate desk in the library, and sit at a different table from the rest of the students in the cafeteria. Fortunately, all of these cases put segregation to trial.

Education was one of things that every parent wanted for their children regardless of whatever situation they were in. Public schools were segregated. In 1954 there was a lawsuit that ended legal segregation in public schools known as Brown V. Board of Education. In the fall of 1950, the NAACP sued on behalf of third-grader Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas (Gates, 2013, p.323). Brown’s parents lived near a white school and wanted their daughter to attend that school because it was closer to their home than any other school that was around them. Thurgood Marshall was one of the lawyers for the NAACP during the time and argued that segregation condemns children, thinking that they lower than the whites that the Court had supposedly threw out in the Plessy case. The Court also heard from other families that were going through the same situation as Brown. May 17th, 1954, the Court ruled in favor of the black students. This decision allowed blacks to attend any public school that they

This was until the Oliver Brown case; Oliver Brown had enough of sending his daughter an unnecessary distance to attend a Black School, when there was a White School nearby. He decided to take his case to the Supreme Court, with the help of his Black lawyer, Thurgood Marshall and the added support of the NAACP group, his case was a success. The fact that his case was lead by a black lawyer was unusual making the success even more celebratory. In 1954, segregated schools were declared to be illegal by the Supreme Court. With the new Supreme Court ruling many states gradually integrated their schools, giving Black Americans a better chance at a substantial education.

In Hopwood v. Texas, Cheryl Hopwood along with three other caucasian law school applicants challenged the affirmative action program at the University of Texas Law School. She claimed that she was denied admission to the law school despite being better qualified than many admitted minority candidates. Hopwood along with Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers, all had better combined LSAT and grade scores than 36 of the 43 Latinos admitted, and 16 of the 18 blacks admitted (Hentoff 1). Judge Sparks ruled that the University could continue to use the racial preferences which had been the issue in the case. In the ruling, he wrote that it was "regrettable that affirmative action programs are still needed in our society", and that they were still "a necessity" until society overcomes its tradition of institutional racism (Hopwood V. Texas 1). After the four plaintiffs appealed the case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "the University of Texas School of Law may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in order to achieve a diverse student body, to combat the perceived effects of a hostile environment at the law school, to alleviate the law school's poor reputation in the minority community, or to eliminate any present effects of past discrimination by actors other than the law school"( Hopwood V. Texas 1). The University appealed the decision, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review, making the case the law of the land in Louisiana, Mississippi, and