Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road to Justice (Jess and Betty Jo Hay Series)

Winner Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History Texas State Historical Association 2010 Carr P. Collins Award Texas Institute of Letters 2011 On February 26 1946 an African American from Houston applied for admission to the University of Texas School of Law. Although he met all of the schools academic qualifications Heman Marion Sweatt was denied admission because he was black. He challenged the universitys decision in court and the resulting case Sweatt v. Painter went to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in Sweatts favor. The Sweatt case paved the way for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka rulings that finally opened the doors to higher education for all African Americans and desegregated public education in the United States. In this engrossing well-researched book Gary M. Lavergne tells the fascinating story of Heman Sweatts struggle for justice and how it became a milestone for the civil rights movement. He reveals that Sweatt was a central player in a master plan conceived by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for ending racial segregation in the United States. Lavergne masterfully describes how the NAACP used the Sweatt case to practically invalidate the “separate but equal” doctrine that had undergirded segregated education for decades. He also shows how the Sweatt case advanced the career of Thurgood Marshall whose advocacy of Sweatt taught him valuable lessons that he used to win the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 and ultimately led to his becoming the first black Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.