Significance: This case began the dismantling of legalized segregation in public life. The Supreme Court ruled that it was impossible to provide “separate but equal” facilities for African Americans, as set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), within the realm of higher education.
Background: In 1946 Heman Sweatt was denied entry into the University of Texas Law School because of a state law refusing admission to African Americans. Sweatt took the school to court, with legal assistance from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall (later a Supreme Court justice). Although Texas did not have a separate law school for African Americans, it quickly established one after Sweatt and the NAACP began their legal proceedings. Sweatt refused to attend this new school, however, because a legal education there would have been inferior to one received at the University of Texas Law School. Sweatt sued, claiming that the state had denied him equal protection of the law as required by the Fourteenth Amendment. The lower courts ruled against Sweatt, and he appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Decision: This case was argued on April 4, 1950, and decided on June 5, 1950, by a vote of 9 to 0. Chief Justice Fred Vinson spoke for the unanimous Court, which ruled in favor of Sweatt. The Court judged that it was impossible to achieve “separate but equal” facilities in the area of state-funded higher education. The Court ruled that a newly established Texas law school for African Americans could in no way measure up to the all-white University of Texas Law School in terms of educational quality. The Court held that by providing an inferior law school for African Americans, Texas was denying Sweatt and others equal protection of the law as required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
