Ada Sipuel's Case Study

Oklahoma has done many things for the civil rights movement in the way of lawsuits, peaceful protests, and public servants’ work. It is surprising and refreshing to think that a state that was so segregated and generally backward on issues relating to race could have so many advocates for civil rights. This is probably due to people feeling that they needed to rise to the occasion and fix these injustices in their state.
In the late days of segregation, the NAACP was of increasing prominence and as a result, it was able to launch several incredibly successful and revolutionary lawsuits. Many of the most successful of these were Oklahoma based. Ada Sipuel’s case is a very and prominent one of these. Ada sued the Oklahoma Board of Regents for

Eventually, after going all the way to the supreme court twice, she was accepted into OU’s law school. Although she was allowed to attend white classes, she was required to sit in a special part of the class designated “Colored”. Ada’s first lawsuit created a law school in Oklahoma specifically for black students.This was neither acceptable to Ada nor was it acceptable to her council. Ada’s lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, brought the case to the supreme court contending that the very nature of law school and of most graduate school fields require fellow piers to discuss and debate with. The supreme court accepted this and forced OU to accept Ada via a writ of mandamus. Another prominent lawsuit was that of George McLaurin, a fifty-five year old teacher who wished to obtain a doctorate in education. His case challenged segregation within the classroom such as Ada experience. After the lawsuit (also a US Supreme Court case), classrooms and school facilities could not separate blacks and whites as it was determined to impair the

One man by the name of Raymond Gary is a prime example. Raymond Gary was the Governor of Oklahoma from January tenth, nineteen-fifty five to January twelfth, nineteen fifty-nine. One of the very first things he did once in office was to have all the bathrooms desegregated in the Capitol building. Another thing he did — likely more influential — was that he declared that he wished to comply completely with the ruling of the Brown v. Board of Education case that had occurred one year previously. Gary's actions integrated Oklahoma's public schools and refunded the black ones forcing whites to accept blacks into their schools under the fourteenth amendment. Although Gary only served one term, his contributions to the civil rights movement will always be remembered in Oklahoma. Another influential Oklahoman a little bit before the time of Raymond Gary was Judge Luther Bohanon. Both of these men showed that individuals could make a difference in a state so segregated as