|
|
|
|
Sweatt v. Painter
|
| |
|
| |
Sweatt v. Painter, , was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial 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 of mandamus, continued the case for six months.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Sweatt v. Painter' Start a new discussion about 'Sweatt v. Painter' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Sweatt v. Painter, , was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial 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 of mandamus, continued the case for six months. This allowed the state time to create a law school only for blacks, which it established in Houston, Texas, rather than in Austin where the University was.
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 and Thurgood Marshall presented Sweatt's case.
The Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, saying that the separate school failed to qualify, both 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 identified between white and black facilities: the University of Texas Law school had 16 full-time and 3 part-time professors; the separate black 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 black law 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 the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
