Chapter 11 | Section 1
Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Seeks Admission to the University of Oklahoma
When World War II ended, the NAACP continued to work on its plan to challenge Oklahoma’s segregation policies in higher education. And they found a smart and eager young woman who wanted to do just that: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher. At first the NAACP asked her older brother Lemuel to help challenge the law, but when he said no, Ada Lois quickly volunteered. She had married Warren Fisher in 1944 and graduated from Langston University with honors in 1945. And the case became known as the Sipuel case. Like her brother, she too wanted to go to law school. She also liked a good fight. In January 1946, Ada Lois made state and national history when she applied to law school at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman. George Lynn Cross, the university’s president, wrote her rejection letter. In the letter, he said that she could not be admitted because her admission would break state laws that did not allow Black students to attend school with white students. Cross actually wrote his letter to help Ada Lois challenge segregation. His letter, by putting in writing that her race was the reason she was not allowed to go to school at OU, provided a piece of clear evidence of the school’s racist policies. This gave Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP exactly what they needed to file a lawsuit.
The legislature and both the OU and state regents did not want to let Ada Lois go to OU, but they also needed to look like they were following the law. So, they came up with a plan to open a separate law school for Black people. Together, the regents and legislature worked quickly to open the Langston School of Law for African American students in January of 1948. They found a few empty rooms in the state capitol building, hired three faculty members to teach (all of whom kept their full-time jobs), and announced the new unaccredited law school was equal to the law school at OU. Ada Lois refused to give up, though. She would not attend what was basically a fake law school. A long three-and-a-half years after her initial application, in June 1949, she became the first African American to attend law school at OU. In the meantime, following Sipuel Fisher’s example, George McLaurin and five other African Americans applied to graduate programs at OU. They were admitted in the fall of 1948 as a result of successful court cases.
Oklahoma City lawyer and newly appointed dean of Langston Law School, Jerome E. Hemry, hanging a makeshift sign for the new school. The classes for the law school were supposed to meet in the Senate rooms of the Oklahoma State Capitol. This largely fake law school did not last long. It was hastily opened just twelve days after the court ruling ordering that either Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher be admitted to the OU law school or a new (and equal) school of law be opened for Black students. The creation of Langston Law School was an effort to avoid integration rather than to provide a quality legal education to Black students.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
In 1952, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher became the first African American to graduate from the University of Oklahoma School of Law. This photo shows her signing the Register of Attorneys that same year. She overcame significant obstacles to gain admission to the law school, and her success marked an important milestone for both women and African Americans in Oklahoma and across the nation. Decades later, she accepted an appointment to serve on the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents, the very board that tried hard to stop her from being admitted to the school. This was no small victory.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The six Black students who received admission to OU graduate programs in the fall of 1948. All six applied on the same day: January 28, 1948. George McLaurin (far left) applied to study education. Maurine Hancock Wilson (second from far left) applied to study social work, as did Ivor Tautum (far right). James Bond (center left) applied to study biology. Mozeal Dillion (center right) applied to study architectural engineering. Helen Holmes (second from far right) applied to study business administration. Each of these students played an important role in challenging segregation and exclusion in graduate education in Oklahoma.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
A sign referring to George McLaurin’s desk where he was required to sit separately from white students. McLaurin was confined to segregated seating until the 1950 Supreme Court case McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents. After this ruling, OU could no longer force McLaurin and other Black students to sit separately from their peers.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
While the cases of McLaurin and Sipuel helped break down racial barriers in higher education, it was a difficult and often painful process. Norman remained a sundown town, meaning an “all-white” town practicing racial segregation and requiring nonwhite people to leave town before the evening, which meant they had to commute from Oklahoma City or other places to go to school. At first they were forced to sit in chairs marked “Colored” and they found themselves alienated from much of campus. Both Sipuel Fisher and McLaurin were represented by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American justice on the US Supreme Court. During the trials, no restaurant in Norman would serve the future Supreme Court justice, but area churches prepared meals on some days when he had to be in Norman. Other times, he ate peanuts from a vending machine for his meal while sitting on the steps of the courthouse.
Thurgood Marshall, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, Amos T. Hall, Buck Colbert Franklin, Otis Clark, by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. The painting serves to highlight individuals with ties to the Tulsa Race Massacre and the struggle for equality in Oklahoma. Sipuel Fisher’s parents fled Tulsa during the massacre. Marshall and Hall appear in the painting because of their work on Sipuel Fisher’s Supreme Court case, which led to her becoming the first African American to graduate from the University of Oklahoma School of Law. Franklin and Clark both survived the massacre. Franklin was a lawyer who helped those living in Black Tulsa fight legal battles concerning rebuilding. He was also the father of renowned historian John Hope Franklin.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Judicial Center, Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Marshall gained experience fighting against segregation. In the early 1950s, he skillfully built on arguments he made in the Sipuel and McLaurin cases to present new arguments to the Supreme Court. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Marshall argued that equality could not exist when students were separated based on the color of their skin. Marshall convinced the court and won the case. US Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren handed down the unanimous verdict in 1954. In delivering the opinion of the Court, Warren famously said that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.”
The Supreme Court’s decision meant that the earlier doctrine of “separate but equal” established in the 1896 Plessy ruling was no longer legal. All public schools needed to be desegregated. However, segregation in public schools did not end overnight. In fact many southern states did not like this ruling and wanted to keep separate schools for Black students and white students. They stalled. They threatened. They dared the Supreme Court to try to enforce the ruling. Some states even closed schools to avoid desegregation. Oklahoma’s response was far from perfect, but it would prove much more progressive and proactive than the response of its neighbors in the South.
Legal Desegregation of Schools
Raymond Gary quickly recognized the problem Oklahoma faced as the Supreme Court thought about what to decide in the Brown case. He promised voters that he would support the Brown ruling when he campaigned for governor in 1954. True to his word, when he took office in January 1955, he kept his promise. Unlike many states with segregated educational facilities (buildings, gyms, and so forth), Oklahoma got money for Black schools and for white schools from different public sources. This, Gary knew, would surely be struck down as unconstitutional. He supported the “Better Schools Amendment,” which included getting rid of separate sources of money for K–12 schools. The Better Schools Amendment also gave money to schools, colleges, and mental hospitals to make them better. The amendment to the state constitution passed by a three-to-one majority in a special election in 1955 and was an important step toward school integration. Governor Gary emphasized that integration would be good for the state’s finances, but he also connected his support for school integration to his religious beliefs. “I grew up in Little Dixie,” he said, but “as an active Baptist and believer in the scriptures,” he added, “I have never understood how persons can call themselves Christians and believe that God made them superior because they were born with white skin.”
Governor Raymond Gary, a Democrat, served from 1955 to 1959. While in office, he supported civil rights and connected integration to his religious faith. He signed multiple civil rights bills into law, including the Better Schools Amendment.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
A number of schools in Oklahoma, such as those in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, moved to integrate. Over the next few years, more schools across the state followed their example. However, segregated schools remained a reality in the state for many African American students because of school district boundaries and local resistance. For example, ten years after the Brown decision, schools in Sand Springs, a suburb on the western edge of Tulsa, remained segregated. When the school board held meetings in 1964 to discuss integration, a lot of people showed up and spoke passionately about why they were against it. Marques Haynes, who grew up in Sand Springs and played for the Harlem Globetrotters from 1947 to 1953, attended the meeting. The famous Sand Springs resident stood and addressed the crowd saying, “It is true that I have been very successful, but I never wanted to be a basketball player. I wanted to be a printer.” He added that printing courses were offered at the white school, but not the Black school. The vote to integrate passed, but some people in Sand Springs continued to be against it.
A 1972 antibusing protest at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Even nearly two decades after Brown v. Board of Education, many continued to push back on integration. This was even truer in cases where students had to spend a lot of time on buses, a concern for many parents.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Marques Haynes playing for the Harlem Globetrotters. In addition to his successful basketball career, Haynes advocated for the desegregation of Charles Page High School in the Sand Springs School District. Haynes had gone to school at Booker T. Washington High School, the Black school in the Tulsa district. He was unhappy that his children had to attend the same segregated school that he did. The school began allowing Black students to attend in 1964, and the entire district desegregated two years later.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.