Cases that Led Up to Brown | brown-v-board-of-edu

Murray V. Maryland

Many universities at this time were not accepting applicants who were black, only because of their race. In 1933, The University of Maryland School of Law had denied black applicant Donald Gaines Murray, purely based on race, and Thurgood Marshall, a previous applicant who was also turned down by this same law school, had decided to try to change this practice. With Marshall’s help, Murray sued the university.

Marshall argued in a Baltimore City Court that Murray was just as adequate and qualified as the white applicants, but he was getting rejected only because of his skin. Another argument made by Marshall was that the practice of rejecting black applicants applying to “white” law schools based only on skin had violated the ‘separate but equal” doctrine because none of the "black law schools" Murray would have to join because he was rejected from Maryland were as great as Maryland’s law school. Marshall also argued that the differences between the “black” and “white’ law schools were so vast that the only way to make things equal between the two schools would be by accepting students like Murray. The Baltimore City Court agreed with Murray, and though the University of Maryland appealed to the Maryland court of Appeals, they had lost again, and were ordered to accept Murray, who graduated from the School of Law two years later.

Sweat V. Painter

In 1946, Herman Sweat applied to a "white law school", the University of Texas, even though he was black. The University, with the knowledge that they wouldn't have to accept Sweat if a "black law school" had already been in existence somewhere on its campus, quickly set up an underprivileged "black law school". Sweat contracted Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who helped Sweat sue to be accepted into the University of Texas law school. Much like the Murray case, Marshall argued that that the "black law school" was not as great as the "white law school" so it went against the "separate but equal" stance. The case had eventually gotten to the Supreme Court level, who unanimously agreed with Sweat, and had cited in their opinion that the ‘black” law school was separate, but it was not equal. The US Supreme Court, much like in the Murray case, believed that the only way to close the wide gap of inequality between the “black” and “white” law schools was to accept Sweat into the University’s school of law.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma

George McLaurin, an African American man, was accepted into The University of Oklahoma’s doctoral program in 1949. The catch was that it was required that he was ostracized from the rest of the white students in class. He had to eat at a different time and table from his white classmates as well. McLaurin argued that the ostracization was not only strange, but it also had dampened his academic experience, and he had decided to sue to end the perverse actions, with the assistance of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP legal defense fund. The case was appealed and went to the Supreme Court, and the decision of this case was announced on the same day the Sweat V. Painter decision was announced, coincidentally. The court agreed with McLaurin, and said his segregation from the other students hindered his academic abilities and ordered the ostracization to be put to an end.

The Cases That Led up to Brown

In order to completely end segregation in public schools, the NAACP decided it needed to win cases in the court that would support racial integration. The cases below would set a precedent in the court systems that would aid in the struggle to end segregation in America's public schools

Picture of Donald Murray, Thurgood Marshall, and Charles Houston

Photo of Sweat waiting in line to apply to Law School

Photo of Mclaurin in his segregated class

Gaines V. Canada

Charles Hamilton Houston led the NAACP legal attack of the Jim Crow Laws. He had noticed that regarding criminal procedures, the US Supreme Court had begun to make verdicts that leaned more towards black rights, and had decided that it would be a good idea to try to start challenging Jim Crow laws in other areas. He knew that there would be little to no chance that the judges would overturn previous constitutional interpretations, so he knew he couldn’t try to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine from the Plessy V. Ferguson, because it would fail in court. Instead, Houston decided he wanted the Plessy Decision to be "enforced" but in such a way that it would undermine segregation.

The idea was that if the NAACP sued a state, and argued for equality in facilities between black children and white, which was necessary according to the Plessy decision, they could weaken segregation. Hamilton reasoned that to make the facilities equal for both black and white children, the states had to build entirely new schools for blacks, which was too expensive, or integrate. If the plan worked, he could further question segregation. To enact this plan, Houston needed to carefully handpick a case that would win, and a case that would set a precedent that would show the inequality blacks faced in the educational system. Houston felt the best case to show inequality in schools would be at a graduate level because most segregated states had no graduate schools for blacks, and wouldn’t let blacks integrate white graduate schools.

Houston had found his case in Missouri, where Lloyd Gaines had been denied admission from the University of Missouri Law School because he was African American. Missouri would pay for Gaines to go to law school out of state, rather than accept him. Houston was the attorney in this case, and had argued that Missouri had to build a black law school that was of the same academic caliber as the white law school, which would be too expensive, or accept him. Gaines ended up winning the case at a Supreme Court level. A precedent was set in this case, like Houston wanted it to. Gaines’s win meant, to an extended meaning, that states would have to build new facilities for blacks that were equal to whites on a educational level, or allow blacks to attend white schools. This case was a very important case regarding Brown v Board of Education.

Photo of Lloyd Gaines