- Sweatt v. Painter
SCOTUSCase
Litigants=Sweatt v. Painter, et al.
ArgueDate=April 4
ArgueYear=1950
DecideDate=June 5
DecideYear=1950
FullName=Herman Marion Sweatt v. Theophilus Shickel Painter
Citation=70 S. Ct. 848; 94 L. Ed. 1114; 1950 U.S. LEXIS 1809
USVol=339
USPage=629
Prior=Cert. to the Supreme Court of Texas
Subsequent=
Holding=TheEqual Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that petitioner be admitted to the University of Texas Law School.
SCOTUS=1949-1953
Majority=Vinson
JoinMajority="unanimous"
LawsApplied="Sweatt v. Painter", ussc|339|629|
1950 , was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal " doctrine ofracial segregation established by the 1896 case "Plessy v. Ferguson ".The case involved a black man, Heman Marion Sweatt, who was refused admission to the
University of Texas School of Law on the grounds that the Texas State Constitution prohibited integrated education. At the time, no law school in Texas would admit blacks. The Texas trial court, instead of granting the plaintiff a writ ofmandamus , continued the case for six months allowing the state time to create a law school only for blacks.The trial court decision was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court denied "writ of error" on further appeal. Sweatt and the NAACP appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
W.J. Durham andThurgood Marshall presented Sweatt's case.The Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, saying that the separate school failed to measure up because of quantitative differences in facilities and intangible factors such as its isolation from most of the future lawyers with whom its graduates would interact.
The documentation of the court's decision includes the following differences in facilities between the University of Texas Law School and the separate law school for blacks. The University of Texas Law school had 16 full-time and 3 part-time professors and the separate law school had 5 full-time professors. The University of Texas Law School had 850 students and a
law library of 65,000 volumes. The separate school had 23 students and a library of 16,500 volumes.The court held that, when considering graduate education, intangibles must be considered as part of "substantive equality."
Today
The 'separate' law school and the college is the modern-day
Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. The law school is known as theThurgood Marshall School of Law .ee also
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 339
* "Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. " - ussc|332|631|1948
* "McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents " - ussc|339|637|1950References
State of Texas vs. NAACP case records, 1911-1961 1945-1961. Description: photocopied documents. 2 microfilm reels. Summary: Records document the 1956-1957 lawsuit that, in effect, outlawed the NAACP in Texas until the 1960s and also reflects the progress of the civil rights movement from the late 1940s to the 1960s.
Byron and Rannie Cook Papers, 1944-1962, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Summary: Correspondence, newspapers, clippings, broadsides, ephemera, speeches, programs, notes, platforms, annual reports, printed material, magazines and artifacts relate to the Cook's involvement with the National Alliance of Postal Workers (Houston Chapter), the NAACP in Houston, service at the U.S. Post Office at Houston, the Progressive Party, the Henry Wallace presidential campaign, Leonard Sweatt, Heman Sweatt, John Butler and with unions.
"The items above and other important material can be found in the University of Texas Library system at this link":http://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/librarymap/cah.html
External links
* [http://laws.findlaw.com/us/339/629.html Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com]
* [http://www.law.du.edu/russell/lh/sweatt/index.htm "Sweatt v. Painter" archive]
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