"Courage and the Refusal To Be Swayed":
Heman Marion Sweatt's Legal Challenge
that Integrated The University of Texas
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In its September 17, 2001 issue, Time magazine declared The University of Texas School of Law to be the national leader among schools working to broaden their traditional applicant pool. The article pointed to various efforts at UT Austin as exceptional, including the enlistment of high-profile minority alumni to write minority applicants encouraging them to apply and the request by a state senator that airlines donate tickets to bring out-of-state African Americans to visit the campus. The Texas Exes alumni association gave nearly $400,000 in financial aid to 31 Hispanics, 28 African Americans, and one Native American in the academic year 2000-01. UT School of Law currently has more than 650 African American alumni and 1,300 Mexican-American alumni, a group that includes such notable figures as Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk and former Secretary of Transportation Frederico Peña, also the one-time mayor of Denver. But this kind of representation was hard-won. Equal opportunity and diversity came slowly and at a price. Fifty years ago, lawsuits fought by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP opened the doors of the UT law school to African Americans. It was a long fight that began when the plaintiff in those suits, Heman Marion Sweatt, walked into the law school on February 26, 1946 and attempted to register for classes. At the time, Sweatt was a 33-year-old Houston mail carrier who was married to his high school sweetheart. As local secretary of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, he worked with attorney Frances Scott Key Whittaker to prepare documentation in a case concerning discrimination against blacks in the post office. The work sharpened his interest in the law as a means of challenging discrimination, and in 1945 he decided to go to law school. Sweatt's timing was perfect. The NAACP was formulating plans for a major lawsuit against The University of Texas to equalize educational opportunities at the graduate and professional levels. Prominent African American attorneys were involved, including Thurgood Marshall and W.J. Durham, and thousands of dollars were raised to support the suit. The NAACP, however, was without a plaintiff for the case. Finding plaintiffs for civil rights lawsuits in the 1940s was no easy task, given the dedication required by chosen individuals and the nearly guaranteed disruption of their lives. The NAACP interviewed several candidates, but none were qualified. Then, in what he later termed a "brash moment" during a meeting at Wesley Chapel in Houston, Heman Sweatt stepped forward. 
Sweatt's decision to undertake the fight was not surprising, given his background. His father, James Leonard Sweatt, set an example of social activism for his children to follow. An educated man who had once been a teacher and principal at a small school in Beaumont, Texas, James Sweatt eventually moved his family to Houston, where he took a job as a postal clerk. Shortly after Heman Sweatt's birth in 1912, James Sweatt helped to organize African American railway mail clerks. He was a key player in the organization of the National Alliance of Postal Employees and a charter member of the Houston NAACP branch. James Sweatt encouraged each of his six children to attend college, and they went off to colleges as disparate as Columbia University and the University of Michigan. He observed, however, that "All of my children had to go out of state to get their training, when their white playmates got the same training at less cost and trouble right here in Texas." Heman Sweatt consequently chose to go to Wiley College in Marshall, where he majored in biology. Wiley was the first black college in Texas to receive accreditation and became a center of black intellectual life at the time. Sweatt studied under James H. Morton, who later became president of the Austin NAACP branch. His most inspiring teacher, however, was Melvin B. Tolson, poet laureate of Liberia and acclaimed author of Harlem Gallery. Tolson was an eloquent orator and a powerful voice when speaking against racial discrimination, and Sweatt later acknowledged him as a major influence on his life. After graduating from Wiley College in 1934, Sweatt pursued a variety of occupations. He worked as a porter, then as a teacher, and finally entered graduate school in public health at the University of Michigan. There he met Lloyd Gaines, a fellow student whose lawsuit against the University of Missouri was before the Supreme Court. The harsh winters in Michigan, however, kept Sweatt in poor health and he ultimately returned to Houston, where he found work in the post office. At the time that he decided to apply to law school at The University of Texas, Heman Sweatt had been employed at the post office for a considerable time, owned a house in Houston, and had been involved with the NAACP for many years. He had befriended prominent activists like Lulu White, the mainstay of the Houston NAACP chapter. He was acquainted with other plaintiffs in anti-discrimination litigation, and he helped to raise funds for lawsuits against all-white primaries and participated in voter registration drives. He was, in essence, very prepared to battle racial discrimination. 
The months leading up to Sweatt's attempt to register for classes at The University of Texas were filled with preparations. NAACP leaders met with him, evaluated his college records, and raised funds for the suit. When he finally reached the Austin campus, he was accompanied by an NAACP delegation. The delegation met with UT President T.S. Painter and other university officials, who discouraged Sweatt from applying. At the meeting, Sweatt claimed that he was applying as an individual and not part of any "crusading Negro group." He said that the only thing he wanted was to occupy one seat in a law school classroom and ultimately to practice law in Texas. The question of his admission was sent to Texas Attorney General Grover Sellers, who announced on March 16, 1946 that he decided to uphold "Texas' wise and long-continued policy of segregation." As such, Sweatt could apply for legal training at Prairie View, the black college affiliated with Texas A&M University, and if no training were provided, then he could legally attend The University of Texas. In Sellars' view, a suitable law curriculum could be set up at Prairie View in 48 hours. Rejecting that scenario, Sweatt filed suit two months later against President Painter and other UT officials in the 126th District Court of Travis County, where Judge Roy C. Archer presided. Court proceedings were slow. First Judge Archer gave the state six months to provide a "substantially equal" course of legal instruction. Six months later, when there was still no law school for African Americans, Archer ruled that a resolution passed at Texas A&M to provide law studies for black students was sufficient. On appeal, Sweatt's case was sent to the lower court for a trial. The state made various attempts to implement diversionary plans that would establish a "separate but equal" all-black law school, hoping to satisfy the wishes of the court. The legislature passed a bill changing Prairie View's name to Prairie View University, and it authorized the new university to teach courses in law, medicine, engineering, pharmacy, journalism, and any other subjects then taught at The University of Texas. A similar bill in 1947 established Texas State University for Negroes, later Texas Southern University. In order to have a facility for law studies available before the trial, the state hastily set up a law school in Austin in the basement of a building on East 13th Street, in a low-income black neighborhood. It became clear that Sweatt's case was creating a surge of Jim Crow schools, and in order to win their case, he and the NAACP would have to change their strategy. As Thurgood Marshall put it, "Whether we like it or not, we are now faced with the proposition of going to the question of segregation as such." 
A number of trials ensued, and the publicity for the case reached publications as widely read as Life magazine. Tensions mounted and Sweatt's health faltered, causing him to quit his job at the post office. He and his wife were harassed by malicious notes and phone calls. In testimony and in an article entitled "Why I Want to Attend the University of Texas," Sweatt played down his opposition to segregation and maintained that his primary consideration was getting a first-class legal education. Finally, on April 4, 1950, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Two months later, the court ruled in Sweatt's favor by unanimous decision. It concluded that Negro law students were not offered substantial equality in educational opportunities, pointing not just to tangible features such as the scope of the library and the size of the student body, but also to intangible factors. It considered "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." The court cited the reputation of the faculty, the position and influence of the alumni, and other factors that made UT "one of the nation's ranking law schools." In fact, the Sweatt case, along with rulings in two companion cases, significantly eroded the doctrine of "separate but equal." On September 19, 1950 a triumphant but exhausted Heman Sweatt registered for classes at The University of Texas School of Law. From the outset he encountered a mixed reception. While some students harassed him and he was confronted with a burning cross during his first week, he found many professors anxious to befriend and encourage him. On several occasions, sympathetic white students escorted him around campus for his protection. Still, despite his hard work, Sweatt found his law school experience very difficult. He felt tremendous pressure to excel, became distracted by the publicity and prejudices he faced, and received failing grades his first year. He returned in the fall of 1951 to audit the classes he'd failed and enrolled in non-law courses in the spring. At the end of that semester, he dropped out of the University. Heman Sweatt later commented, "I don't think anyone can possibly realize the wear and tear on personal emotions one suffers in going through six years of this kind of struggle." He returned to Houston in the summer of 1952 a changed man. His marriage had ended in divorce, his health was jeopardized, and his hopes of becoming a lawyer were shattered. In time, however, he moved on, earning a master's degree from Atlanta University's Graduate School of Social Work in 1954. His experience in his home state had not defeated him. He ultimately enjoyed a successful career as an assistant director of the National Urban League's Southern Regional Office and as a teacher at Atlanta University. What Heman Sweatt accomplished in Texas is even more impressive. Today the UT School of Law is distinguished by its efforts to recruit minorities, not reject them. It's a school with a diverse alumni base and student population. In the fall of 2001, 50 years after Heman Sweatt struggled for admission, Time magazine praised the school for its minority recruitment efforts, and Hispanic Business magazine ranked UT as the number one law school in the nation for Hispanics. All of this comes despite the 1996 Hopwood court ruling that has severely hampered minority recruitment in Texas. Shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling in 1950, Thurgood Marshall wrote to Heman Sweatt, "If it had not been for your courage and your refusal to be swayed by others, this victory would not have been possible." A half century later, the legacy of that victory can be seen in every classroom at The University of Texas School of Law. In 1987, the UT Little Campus was renamed the Heman Sweatt Campus, and a $10,000 scholarship in Sweatt's memory was established in the UT law school. 
The Heman Sweatt story is a triumph of courage, dedication, and perseverance. To honor the man for his monumental impact on the course of civil rights history in Texas and throughout the nation, UT Austin hosts an annual Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights every spring. Organized by UT's Office of Community Relations, faculty, and students, the symposium provides a forum for discussions, films, readings, and public addresses by prominent national African American leaders. What began as adversity lives on as a victory of the human spirit. By Vivé Griffith Sources: Michael L. Gillette, "Heman Marion Sweatt: Civil Rights Plaintiff," in Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times, ed. Alwyn Barr and Robert Calvert (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1981) |
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