Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times Page: 171
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Texans for Their Times 171
the library of the Texas Supreme Court. They assigned three Universi-
ty of Texas law professors to teach courses on a part-time basis in addi-
tion to their teaching responsibilities at the university. University of
Texas law school dean Charles McCormick and librarian Helen
Hargrave received appointments as dean and librarian of the base-
ment school. They worked to obtain accreditation for the institution.
When the basement school opened its doors for registration on March
10, 1947, its most noticeable deficiency was students. There were
none. After no one matriculated in the first week, officials announced
that there would be no deadline for enrollment. Heman Sweatt
received a registered letter announcing the school's opening and in-
viting him to apply. 6 Instead of replying he took the letter to
Durham in Dallas. A number of Negroes did inquire about the law
school, but none could be persuaded to register for the spring
semester. The NAACP, and its Austin branch in particular, worked
assiduously to discourage applications.
Even though the basement law school had not students, by the
time of the remand, the state at least had a physical facility to com-
pare with the University of Texas. While the state had raised the
stakes in an effort to retain segregation, the NAACP altered its
original strategy to make segregation per se the major issue. What
began as a lawsuit demanding equal educational opportunities under
the Plessy and Gaines decisions evolved into an attack on the
"separate but equal" doctrine. The new approach held that segrega-
tion was inherently discriminatory and, therefore, a violation of the
"equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thurgood Marshall and the other NAACP lawyers at an Atlanta
conference in April, 1946, decided to abandon the earlier tangential
approach in favor of the frontal assault on segregation. They conclud-
ed that their suits demanding equal facilities had not resulted in over-
turning segregation, as they had hoped. They had succeeded only in
creating a rash of Jim Crow schools.37 Although the Sweatt suit
became the first to follow the frontal assault strategy, the lawyers did
not actually modify the case until it was remanded to the district court
in March, 1947.
Even then it was not so much the lawyers' decision in Atlanta
but a series of complex factors in Texas that led to implementation of
the frontal assault. First of all, circumstances had changed. At the
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Barr, Alwyn & Calvert, Robert A. Black Leaders: Texans for Their Times, book, 2007; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth296839/m1/182/?q=1966+yearbook+north+texas+state+university: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.