Oklahoma Bar Journal

‘As Soon As’ Three Simple Words That Crumbled Graduate School Segregation: Ada Lois Sipuel v. Board of Regents

By Cheryl Brown Wattley

It was only a single page per curiam opinion issued by the United States Supreme Court in Ada Lois Sipuel v. Board of Regents.1 The pronouncement of Sipuel’s rights were contained in a single paragraph:

The petitioner is entitled to secure legal education afforded by a state institution. To this time, it has been denied her although during the same period many white applicants have been afforded legal education by the State. The State must provide it for her in conformity with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and provide it as soon as it does for applicants of any other group.

At the same time, it was a ruling that reached beyond the territorial boundaries of Oklahoma and touched all states with segregated graduate education programs. It was an edict that furthered the disintegration of the fiction of separate but equal education and helped to pave the precedential pathway to Brown v. Board of Education. It crushed states’ arguments that African American citizens desiring to pursue graduate studies had to give advance notice to allow the state time to create a separate educational institution. It denied states of the evasive and obstructionist tactic of pleading for time to fund and establish alternate educational offerings for its African American citizens.

The Supreme Court’s frustration with state antics and delays was foretold by the questions posed to the attorneys representing Oklahoma in the oral argument before the Supreme Court. Maurice Merrill, acting dean of the OU law school and one of the state’s attorneys, was immediately asked questions. Justice Robert Jackson began:

Based upon the representations made at oral argument, the Supreme Court could have expected its order would cause Sipuel’s immediate admission to the OU law school. Just weeks earlier, Oklahoma officials had declined to establish a separate law school because funding was not available.  That decision was made despite the impending Supreme Court argument and the express opinion of counsel that such a step would improve the state’s position before the Supreme Court.5Based upon that position, the only way for the state to provide Sipuel with a legal education “as soon as” it was afforded to white citizens would require her admission to the OU law school.

Instead, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education passed a resolution on Jan. 19, 1948, that established the Langston School of Law and declared that it “shall be substantially equal to the course of study” at the OU law school.6 Predictably, when white students started classes at OU just a mere seven days later, on Jan. 26, 1948, Sipuel was again denied admission. This time, however, the denial was based upon the assertion that a “substantially equal law school” now existed for African American students: Langston School of Law.

The Langston School of Law consisted of three rooms rented in the state Capitol, including a classroom that was a converted storage closet. Resolutions were passed adopting the OU law school bulletin and course descriptions. An agreement was made that Langston Law School students would be allowed access to the state Capitol law library. A part-time dean and two part-time professors had been hastily hired.

The “as soon as” mandate was felt most sharply when six African American students applied on the last day of registration for the spring 1948 semester to graduate programs offered at OU. Roscoe Dunjee, head of the Oklahoma NAACP and publisher of The Black Dispatch, had recruited these students and strategically waited until the state would not have time to create yet another bogus course of study. The applicants sought immediate admission to graduate programs in social work, commercial education, architectural engineering, school administration and zoology.14 Dr. George Lynn Cross, OU’s president, had been instructed to request an opinion letter from Mac Williamson, the state attorney general, if any African American residents applied to OU. Williamson, in an astounding interpretation, informed Dr. Cross the applicants were not to be admitted; they had not given the state notice of their interest to study their respective fields. Based upon the attorney general’s opinion, all six applicants were denied admission.

But this time, litigation would not take years to secure the admission of the six applicants. Filing a lawsuit in Oklahoma federal court on behalf of Dr. George McLaurin, the NAACP argued the per curiam opinion in Sipuel demanded his immediate admission. It was an argument that resonated with the three-member panel of federal judges.

“As soon as.” “Unmistakably plain.” The panel ultimately issued its opinion. “We hold, in conformity with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, that the plaintiff is entitled to secure a postgraduate course of study in education leading to a doctor’s degree in this State in a State institution, and that he is entitled to secure it as soon as it is afforded to any other applicant.”16 Within weeks, Dr. George McLaurin became the first African American to enroll in and attend the University of Oklahoma.

This mandate of “as soon as” in the Sipuel decision changed that reality because states could not financially afford to maintain dual systems of graduate education. Those words caused the admission of Black graduate students in schools across the South, in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Delaware.

They forced the Oklahoma Legislature to amend its statutes to allow the education of African Americans at state-supported institutions, albeit on a segregated basis. They were the first paving stones in a path that led to the matriculation and graduation of trailblazers, such as former Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Tom Colbert, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Judge David Lewis, former OU Regent Melvin Hall and countless other African Americans now practicing law.

 

Cheryl Brown Wattley has practiced law for over 40 years. In 2006, she went into teaching at the OU College of Law and while there, wrote an award-winning book, A Step Toward Brown v. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Her Fight to End Segregation. In 2014, she returned to Dallas as a founding faculty at UNT Dallas College of Law, where she continues to teach.

  1. Ada Lois Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631 (1948).
  2. Ada Lois Sipuel was finally admitted to the OU law school on June 20, 1949. Despite Sipuel’s refusal to enroll and the absence of any other students, Oklahoma had kept Langston School of Law open from January 1948 through June 1949. Once Langston’s closure was definite, Sipuel was admitted to OU because the state no longer offered a course of legal study in a separate institution.
  3. “NAACP Wins: O.U. Ordered to Admit Miss Sipuel,” The Black Dispatch, Jan. 17, 1948, 1, 2.
  4. Id.
  5. State officials had twice decided that the Oklahoma state budget could not provide funding for a separate law school for African American students. The Board of Regents for Higher Education met just weeks before the Supreme Court oral argument; however, it declined to take any action to establish a separate law school. Minutes, Board of Regents for Higher Education, 66th Meeting, Dec. 15, 1947, p. 508.
  6. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, Resolution No. 142, Jan. 19, 1948. This declaration blatantly ignored the reality that Langston University, the state university for African Americans, had not been able to achieve accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges. The accrediting agency informed state officials that, “Langston University has not at this time sufficient strength to justify approval of a program which includes graduate work.” W.D. Little, A Memorandum by Mr. W.D. Little, undated, Papers of George Lynn Cross, 12.
  7. Minutes of First Meeting, Regents’ Committee on Langston University School of Law, Jan. 19, 1948; Certificate, Board of Bar Examiners, Feb. 2, 1948; Certificate of Authority No. 9, Office of the Governor, State of Oklahoma, Jan. 22, 1948.
  8. Ada Lois Sipuel No. 14807, Transcript of Oral Proceedings, May 24, 1948; Minute of the Court, Sipuel v. Board of Regents, No: 14807, Aug. 2, 1948
  9. Henry Foster, an OU College of Law professor, testified at the evidentiary hearing about Langston School of Law and whether it was “substantially equal” to OU law school. Foster testified that Langston was “a fake, it is a fraud, and it is a deception, and to my mind [it] is an attempt to avoid the clear-cut mandate and orders of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is indecent.” Ada Lois Sipuel No. 14807, Transcript of Oral Proceedings, May 24, 1948, 141.
  10. Parker v. University of Delaware, 75 A.2d 225 (1950).
  11. Judith Kilpatrick, Desegregating the University of Arkansas School of Law: L. Clifford Davis and the Six Pioneers, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 2 (summer 2009).
  12. “Alabama Makes Training Plans for Professions,” New Journal and Guide, Jan. 24, 1948, p. 9A.
  13. “Oklahoma Court Order Hits White Students,” The Chicago Defender, Jan. 24, 1948, p.1.
  14. Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson letter to Dr. G. L. Cross, President, University of Oklahoma, Jan. 29, 1948.
  15. OU Regents Minutes, Jan. 29, 1948, 2589-2596.
  16. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, (W.D. Okla. 1948).
  17. Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936).
  18. State of Tennessee ex. rel. Joseph M. Michael v. Henry B. Witham et al. Dec. 4, 1941; Bluford v. Canada, 32 F. Supp. 707 (D.C. Mo 1940); Affidavit of Charles L. Eubanks, Jan. 18, 1945, NAACP Papers, Part 3, Reel 11:1120.
  19. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, A Matter of Black and White: The Autobiography of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, p. 185.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal – OBJ 92 Vol 5 (May 2021)

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