Compare And Contrast Sweatt And Brown V Board Of Education

Heman Sweatt and Brown versus the Board of education

In 1946, Heman Sweatt wanted to attend the University of Texas Law school, but since he was an African American, was not to allowed Entrance. His suit, Sweatt vs Painter challenged the separate but equal standards in segregated education and was the forerunner to Brown versus the board of education. This was part of the beginning of the forced integration of schools in the United States.

"it was not until after World War II that an assault on Jim Crow in the South began to make headway. In 1950 the Supreme Court ruled that the Univ. of Texas must admit a black, Herman (sic) Sweatt, to the law school, on the grounds that the state did not provide equal education for him. This was followed

but was denied entrance in to the University of Texas because of his race. He was told by UT president Theophilus Painter that the College could not accommodate him and he would need to gain his law education out of state, or at a separate Law school for Black students. Sweatt, with help of the NAACP pressed the issue which was reviewed by and the segregation ruling was upheld by the Texas attorney General. The case went to the Texas Supreme Court, and then onto the United States Supreme Court, which decided in Sweatts favor in June 1950, concluding that Sweatt could not receive an equal education in a separate law school. This supreme court action emboldened and laid the ground work more civil rights challenges and protests, one of the most famous being Brown Versus the board of

The Supreme Court heard the case in the fall of 1953 and examined whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited segregation.

When the decision came back against segregation, Justice Warren noted the adverse psychological effects that segregated schools had on African American children.

"Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The effect is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system."