This is the 12th installment of the Untold Series where I look at some of the most important civil rights cases. I quickly unpack their stories and why I believe they are significant. This series is an adaption to an ad hoc seminar I created while a student at Duke University School of Law.
This video looks at Sweatt v. Painter (1950) a desegregation case decided four years before Brown v. Board of Education. Here, the court looked at whether the University of Texas Law School’s segregation policy denied Sweatt Equal Protection of the law under the 14th Amendment because it failed to provide an alternative law school for blacks that was qualitatively equal to UT’s law school. This case was important step towards the elimination of the separate but equal doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson.
Resources–
Before Brown by Gary Lavergne
–Until Next Time–
Palooke
