Twenty‐One Months of Hell and the Supreme Court to the Rescue in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
2020; Wiley; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/jsch.12227
ISSN1540-5818
Autores Tópico(s)American History and Culture
ResumoUnder our federal system, which divides power between a central authority in Washington, D.C., and the authorities in the fifty states, conflicts are bound to arise. No matter how carefully some powers are delegated to the federal government and others assigned to the states, there will inevitably be areas where both the federal and the state governments claim primacy and where each insists on implementing its own policy. When it comes to describing and analyzing such situations, we are too often content merely to explore the legal arguments marshaled by both sides and the judicial decisions aimed at resolving the conflict. Not enough attention is given to the harrowing difficulties faced by those who have to navigate between state and federal dictates and who find themselves improvising measures that they hope will satisfy the opposing requirements imposed upon them. Between October 1948 and June 1950, officials at the University of Oklahoma were faced with just such a difficulty. In January 1948, a sixty-one-year-old African American named George W. McLaurin applied for admission to the University. He was a retired professor at Langston University, Oklahoma's all-black college, he had a master's degree from the University of Kansas, and he hoped to earn a doctorate in Education.1 Langston offered no graduate work whatever, but the University of Oklahoma, in all of its fifty-six-year history, had never admitted a black person. McLaurin and five other African Americans had been encouraged to apply by the Supreme Court's ruling three weeks earlier in Sipuel v. Board of Regents.2 In that case, the Court declared that because black Oklahomans had no access to legal training at a state institution while whites had studied law at the University for decades, Oklahoma was obligated, under the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to provide Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher the opportunity for a legal education substantially equal to that provided to whites. Rather than admitting her to the University's law school, however, the state, desperate to preserve segregation, flung together in three weeks a bogus law school for blacks. Fisher and her National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers, led by Thurgood Marshall, returned to the judicial system, arguing that the two schools could not possibly be considered equal. Meanwhile, the six African Americans, each hoping to pursue graduate work in a field not available to them at Langston, saw in the Sipuel decision enough similarity to their own circumstances to move them to apply for admission. The NAACP chose McLaurin to make the test case. The segregation of blacks had a long history in Oklahoma education. It was practiced in the schools of four of the Five Civilized Tribes and legalized by the Territorial Legislature before statehood. Segregation in schools was enshrined in Oklahoma's constitution in 19073 and then enforced by the state legislature. In 1941, lawmakers fortified the system by mandating harsh daily fines against any administrator who enrolled a black student in a white school (or vice versa), against any teacher who taught in a mixed-race classroom, and against any student who willingly sat in such a classroom.4 Nevertheless, McLaurin and his attorneys pressed their demand for admission through the state judicial system (unsuccessfully) and into the federal courts. Finally, on September 29, 1948, the three-judge federal district court for the western district of Oklahoma, citing Sipuel, ruled that McLaurin was entitled to be admitted to the graduate program he desired as long as Oklahoma offered that program to whites. The judges declared that those sections of the 1941 law that levied fines against administrators, teachers, and students were unconstitutional in this case. But then, they added a troubling sentence: “This does not mean, however, that the segregation laws of Oklahoma are incapable of enforcement.”5 The judges obviously felt that—except in a case like McLaurin's, where those laws infringed upon an individual's constitutional rights—overturning the segregation laws of the sovereign state of Oklahoma was beyond their jurisdiction. Thus it happened that officials at the University of Oklahoma confronted a federal insistence that McLaurin be admitted and, alongside it, a state insistence that Oklahoma's legal system of racial separation be maintained. Reconciling these two requirements would not be easy. Law student Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher is pictured above with her attorneys Amos T. Hall (left) and Thurgood Marshall (center), along with NAACP Regional Director Dr. W.A.J. Bullock (right). In January 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma University must provide equal (yet still separate) facilities for Fisher to pursue her law studies. The state established a vastly inferior law school for her, which she refused to attend. On Sunday, October 10, three days before McLaurin came to Norman to register for classes, the University's Board of Regents held a special meeting in the office of the school's president, George Lynn Cross.6 There the Regents received for their consideration one of the most bizarre reports ever presented in any American university. Cross had asked Roscoe Cate, his financial vice president, to study and report on the matter that was on everyone's mind: how could the University of Oklahoma admit an African-American student and still maintain segregation? Cate's report drew a crucial distinction between “complete” and “partial” segregation and came quickly to an obvious conclusion: the Regents could, if they wished, implement the complete segregation of McLaurin by the second semester; but if he were to be admitted for the present semester, “only partial segregation will be possible.” Complete segregation would entail setting aside a classroom for his exclusive use and hiring a qualified teacher at the associate or full professor level. And even if that difficulty were somehow overcome, complete segregation would still be virtually impossible. For example, white graduate students had access to the book stacks in the University's library. To deny McLaurin that access was to invite further litigation on the ground that he was not being treated equally. But how could he exercise that access and still be separated? Moreover, graduate students normally participated in seminars that were deemed an essential part of their education. How could McLaurin, the only black student in the College of Education, attend a seminar under conditions of complete separation? Then there was the matter of the money. Hiring a qualified teacher (if one could be found) would cost $6,000 a year, with another $1,000 needed to maintain separate facilities. These expenses had not been anticipated in the current budget. And then Cate raised the most alarming possibility of all: “this cost is for McLaurin only. If other Negroes are enrolled in other departments, comparable professors at comparable salaries would have to be provided.” Cate's report was almost too much for the Regents to absorb. In the end, they agreed that McLaurin be admitted “under such rules and regulations as to segregation as the president of the University shall consider to afford Mr. G. W. McLaurin substantially equal educational opportunities … and that the president of the University promulgate such regulations.”7 In short, the Regents, unable or unwilling to grapple with the intricacies of providing segregation, threw the responsibility to George Cross. Cross, who thought that the state's segregation laws were ludicrous, unjust, and embarrassing, set about arranging the “disagreeable details.”8 They were simple enough. All of McLaurin's classes were to be held in a room that had an attached “alcove.” He was to have a desk in the alcove where he could see the teacher and the blackboard at a forty-five-degree angle but where he would be separated from the white students. He could enter the library stacks at the same time as white graduate students but was to have his own table in the library where only he could sit; he could sit at no other table and no white student could sit at his. He was similarly assigned his own table in the student Union; he could sit nowhere else and no white student could sit at his table. The “Jug,” a snack shop in the Union, was open to him for lunch between noon and 1:00 P.M., and no white student could eat there during that hour. A toilet on the first floor of the Education building was set aside for his exclusive use. Under such conditions did the University's first black student begin his studies. McLaurin's enrollment for the first semester of the 1948-1949 academic year led inevitably to the dire possibility mentioned in Cate's report. Other African Americans, undeterred by the grotesque conditions imposed upon McLaurin, began to apply. By early February 1949, the University received five such applications for the second semester. Each applicant was an Oklahoma citizen and each was qualified for graduate work. Cross, at the Regents’ directive, forwarded each case to attorney general Mac Q. Williamson for an opinion, and as a result, two additional African American students joined McLaurin for the second semester. Cross regarded the procedure for admitting black students as “complex” and “absurd,”9 and he was not alone in his criticism. A Norman Transcript editorial called the process “nonsense” and so technical that “action by the Legislature … is sorely needed.”10 On January 29, the State Regents for Higher Education urged lawmakers to let qualified black students enter graduate programs in white schools if those programs were unavailable at Langston.11 By April, even Mac Williamson, tired of acting as the University's virtual admissions officer, urged the Legislature to modify the law.12 Despite the mounting pressure, the politicians delayed for as long as possible any action that would ease the path of blacks into white colleges and universities. Finally, at the end of the session, a lawmaker introduced legislation. In its original form, House Bill 405 provided that qualified African-American students desiring a field of graduate study not available at Langston could automatically enter a state (white) college or university offering that field. It did not change the segregation laws but only suspended them in such cases. Although black students could now enroll in white schools, they were still to be taught on a segregated basis. But importantly, the bill let authorities at the white institutions decide exactly what measures constituted “segregation.” Cross left for a trip to Chicago just before the bill was to be voted on. He was disappointed that segregation was still required, but he thought that if he and the Regents could determine the actual arrangements, the University could probably live with it.13 When Cross returned, he learned to his horror that at the last minute the Legislature had disastrously amended the bill under pressure from the Senate president. Instead of letting each white institution define what education on “a segregated basis” required, the amended bill defined the term to mean “classroom instruction given in separate classrooms or at separate times.”14 The amended bill was passed by both houses and signed by the governor on June 11, 1949. Cross saw instantly that it was unworkable. At least twenty-five black students were coming for the summer session. Finding separate rooms and additional faculty for the dozens of classes involved—most of them for only one or two students—was simply impossible. He told the press that to comply, the University needed $10,000 now and $100,000 by September.15 A retired professor at Langston University, Oklahoma's all-black college, George W. McLaurin had a master's degree from the University of Kansas and he hoped to earn a doctorate from the Education Department at Oklahoma University. Because of his race, he had to sit in this segregated alcove in the University's classroom. A worried Cross turned first to law professor John Cheadle, whose analysis of the new law was somber and sarcastic. “I assume that it will be construed to mean separate class facilities, separate living quarters, separate eating provisions (Negroes may not be eaten by lions or tigers which heretofore have eaten only white people), and separate rest rooms, etc.” The astute Cheadle summed it all up in eleven words: “This 1949 act will cause us a great deal of trouble.”16 Cross also wrote to attorney general Williamson for his opinion: “In your interpretation, please indicate what constitutes a ‘separate classroom.’” He also asked about “eating facilities, library facilities, toilet facilities, University housing, attendance at athletic contests, and other campus activities.”17 Cross was to call Williamson's response “most helpful,”18 but it was actually a life saver for the University. Williamson affirmed that House Bill 405 required that blacks had to be taught in separate classrooms or at different times. However, he added, “what constitutes a ‘classroom’ … can be more accurately determined by the governing board or other proper authorities of said institution than by this office.”19 Cross and his advisers promptly determined that if you used ropes or railings to mark off part of a room, you magically created two separate rooms where only one had existed before! Cross had his doubts about whether the authorities would sit still for this ruse but, believing that the University had no other choice, he ordered that barriers and railings and “Colored Only” signs be placed where black students would be taking classes.20 Two weeks later, his actions were unanimously approved by the Regents.21 Senate president Bill Logan was not fooled by this devious device of dividing rooms with rails and ropes. On June 18, a week after the law was signed, he wrote Cross an angry letter denouncing the scheme as an obvious “subterfuge,” revealing “scorn and disrespect” for the Legislature.22 Logan's letter was unnecessary. It was clear to Cross, his assistants, and probably to the Regents that they were skating perilously on the edges of legality. Dodging the law's intent by the pretense that dividing a room with railings was enough to make two separate rooms was a bold step, but as no funds were forthcoming to implement the “different times” option, Cross could see no alternative. As he remarked to a correspondent, we “have been walking a ‘tight rope’ in an effort to get the problem solved in a manner that would be just and at the same time legal.”23 The new law of 1949 encouraged a steady stream of black students eager for graduate work at the University. Some enrolled for study on the Norman campus, while others took classes at the Graduate Study Center in Oklahoma City. The Center, part of the University's Extension Division, specialized in the various subfields of Education, and students there tended to be women teachers hoping to improve their professional skills. Naturally, classes at the Center were segregated.24 At the summer session of 1949, there were around thirty African-American students among the 5,100 whites. They were enrolled in more than forty classes. Approximately half of them did graduate work in Education, while the others studied various fields from English to Sociology, from Engineering to Home Economics. More than half were from Oklahoma City, and the others came from cities and towns across the state.25 At the start of the 1949–1950 academic year, there were around fifteen black students on the Norman campus (among about 12,000 whites) with the same number at the Graduate Center. By the second semester, at least sixty-four black students were enrolled—forty-one at the Graduate Center. The breakdown by gender was significant: there were only four men among the thirty-seven women at the Center. In Norman, there were twenty-three black students, seven men and sixteen women. Of these, nineteen (including George McLaurin) were taking Education courses.26 It was no longer a rare and startling thing for white students to encounter a black face on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. From McLaurin's entry in October 1948 to the end of the 1949–1950 academic year, the University enrolled close to 150 African-American students—almost four times as many women as men (118 to 32) and the vast majority (probably around 100) in various subfields of Education. There were as many as 100 black students at the University in the summer of 1950, and in the fall semester of the 1950–1951 academic year as many as sixty-four could be found on the Norman campus. By October 1950, the University had accepted for admission 231 African Americans, and by July 1951 that number had reached 314, although many of those who were accepted never actually enrolled. 27 The arrival of McLaurin and these dozens of other black men and women forced both those long-suffering students and the University itself to face problems for which there were no precedents. These problems required hard decisions and produced embarrassing incidents; for the students they led to discrimination, hardships, and needless humiliations that it would be difficult to overestimate. For twenty-one months, school officials had to invent policies that steered the University between demands of the state's segregation laws and those of the federal courts for equal treatment of African Americans. The officials stumbled along as best they could, improvising in areas so far-ranging and unpredictable that no one in 1948 could have foreseen all the difficulties that lay ahead or imagined the contortions that would be required. One thing is certain. John Cheadle's remark to Cross (“this 1949 Act will cause us a great deal of trouble”) had been prophetic. The basic physical adjustments that were needed cost considerable effort and some expense. “Will you please put a ‘Reserved for Colored’ sign on one of the cubicles in the women's restroom in the basement of the Administration Building,” vice president Carl Mason Franklin wrote to the head of the Physical Plant.28 Signs also had to be supplied to every department and every classroom where a black student might be present. In the rooms to be used by black students, barriers, railings, ropes, and separated rows of seats had to be arranged. Usually it was the back row of the room that was separated for this purpose, and usually only one student could be found sitting back there alone. Problems arose immediately upon the admission of Orpherita Daniels, one of the two African Americans joining McLaurin for the second semester of the 1948–1949 academic year. Her classes were to meet in a room in the library, but that was a small seminar room seating “twenty students around a large conference table,” and it would be hard “providing segregation similar to that used with Mr. McLaurin.”29 Some cases were easier than others. In September 1949, the dean of Arts and Sciences reported that the situation in the English Department was under control: “There is one [black] student enrolled and he is seated on the back row” in all his classes “with no white students in these classes on these rows.” Zoology, however, was “more complicated” because “there are three negro students and laboratories are involved.” In the lecture hall, “the negro students sit in front on the right hand side of the teacher with no white students on that row.” The labs, however, were trickier. In one of them “negro students [sic] sit on one side of the laboratory desk with three white students on the opposite side facing him.” In the second “the negro student sits in an area surrounded by the wall and two tables forming an ‘U’ to separate him from the white students.” And in the third, the desks “are arranged around the room against the wall with students facing the wall. The negro student in this class is separated from other students by the sink and a vacant seat.”30 The responsibility for navigating the logistics and expenses of segregated facilities fell to George Lynn Cross, president of the University of Oklahoma. Cross thought the state's segregation laws were ludicrous, unjust, and embarrassing, and spelled out the numerous obstacles to enforcing them to the University's board. Eating arrangements posed other difficulties. By a curious fact, neither the state constitution nor its statutory law required the separation of races at places where food was served. Legal advisor John Cheadle, after a study of the state's segregation laws, concluded that “there are no provisions forbidding the mixing of races in dining rooms and hotels.” This omission, Cheadle believed, was “a sort of blind spot in our law.”31 Evidently, Cross and the Regents were unaware of this, simply assuming that the mixing of races in eating places was forbidden. In January 1950, this error was called to Cross's attention by a white undergraduate. In a note to her, Cross confessed that “I find that, after investigation, you are right in your statement that there is no state law in regard to segregation in public eating places.” Nevertheless, he wrote, “it was thought best, apparently, to provide segregation in regard to all activities associated with education, and not merely segregate with respect to classroom activities.”32 The plan that was devised for McLaurin to have lunch during his first semester was continued for the second, when he was joined by the two other African-American students present. They were to eat at the “Jug” in the Union from noon to 1:00 P.M. No whites could use the place during that hour, and the African Americans could not use it at any other time. That arrangement was maintained during the summer session of 1949, but starting on June 30, two tables in the “Jug” were set aside for black students. At first, the tables were separated by a chain, but after “constant publicity regarding rails and chains,” the chain was removed and signs indicating that the tables were reserved were added.33 In early 1950, the “Jug” was closed, and black students were allowed to eat either at the Union cafeteria or at the cafeteria at the Wilson Center dormitory. At both places, they could go through the lines with the whites, but then they had to carry their trays to designated tables, at which no whites could sit. Anyone who thought that this simple arrangement would settle the matter of providing food for African Americans was naive. A string of incidents soon complicated the business of human beings eating food. On April 16, 1948, Roscoe Cate got a nervous letter from the director of University Housing. The woman in charge of the dormitory cafeteria reported that W. H. Smith of the Art Department brought into the cafeteria “a negro man as his guest today.” Luckily, “there was no incident or undue excitement” by the students eating there. Nevertheless, the superintendent “was considerably perturbed over the affair since she hardly knew what to do about the matter.” The director begged for a “definite statement of policy” because he thought (erroneously) that “it is entirely possible that the segregation laws of Oklahoma would prohibit our serving white people and colored people in the same room.”34 The problem was referred to Cheadle, who replied that the Legislature prohibited the mixing of students, “but if the negroes are merely visiting the school or are there not as students but as invitees … that prohibition does not apply.”35 The hair-raising emergency caused by Smith and his guest occurred on school property. Most of the trouble, however, involved use of the Memorial Student Union. That building had been erected by a massive fund-raising campaign in the mid-1920s and no public money had been used. The Union was governed by a nonprofit corporation separate from the University. Union policy was made by a board of governors consisting of prominent alumni living all over the country, with the day-to-day affairs of the building entrusted to a board of managers.36 There was strong sentiment on the part of some important alumni, whether or not members of the Union's Board of Governors, to resist desegregation and keep things the way they had always been. The Governors knew that there would be black students on the campus, but some of them felt that those students should be “furnished only such facilities as are necessary for … obtaining an education.”37 Tom Carey, a respected leader of the alumni association and twice its president, ventured an opinion on blacks using the Union in a letter written the same week as McLaurin's arrival for his first class. As access to the Union depended on paying annual fees, Carey wrote, “I would simply refuse to permit the collection or to accept fees collected for the use of these premises by any persons other than white students or students of Indian blood.” Carey insisted that the absolute ban he was proposing arose “not from any animosity of the Negro,” but “because I believe the usefulness of the Union facilities will cease if it is opened to the Negro race.”38 On December 11, 1946, long before McLaurin's arrival, the University hosted a short course at the Union on the classroom use of audio-visual equipment. Among those attending were three faculty members of Langston's Education Division. A dinner was planned to conclude the course and the three from Langston bought tickets. The Union refused to serve them. It was, of course, humiliating to the three teachers but also to authorities at the University. When Cross learned of the incident, all he could do was tell the director of short courses that in the future he should “frankly explain … that the Oklahoma Memorial Union will not serve Negroes and that there are some luncheon or dinner meetings included in the conference to which Negroes cannot be invited.” He also told the director to be more careful about selling dinner tickets to black guests and advised trying to find locations other than the Union where black people might be allowed to eat.39 In November 1948, the Student Senate hosted a statewide conference of student governments. A reception was scheduled for the end of the conference, and the Union was advised “that there was a possibility of both colored and white delegates being present at the reception.” The lounge was “tentatively” reserved while the opinion of the Board of Governors was sought. The majority of the seventeen Governors voted no and the reservation was cancelled. Moreover, “this is official notification that facilities of the Oklahoma Memorial Union are not to be booked for assembly of white and colored students, under present regulations.”40 Then in May 1949, Lawrence Rogers of the Health Education Department held a conference called “Spotlight on Health.” After booking the Union, he told the manager that one of the participants would be a professor from Langston. Rogers was told “that the colored professor would be required to take a seat aside from the white delegates at the conference.” But that was not the end of it. What if Rogers wanted to serve coffee or refreshments? Would it be possible for the black professor to be served at a separate table in the conference room?41 The answer returned to the manager of the Union was yes. Finally, on October 11, 1949, the Union's Board of Governors gathered in Oklahoma City for the purpose of “dealing with the colored student matters.” They arrived at some definite decisions. The first involved the campus YMCA and YWCA, both of which had offices in the Union. The question was “do negroes have access” to these offices for “mixed conferences” and counseling [sic]?” The Governors ruled that “they do not. A colored student may go to the YM or YW offices … but not in mixed groups.” It was next decided that black students who wanted to hold a luncheon or a banquet at the Union could do so “providing they meet the same priority, minimum number participating, etc., as do white students.” The apparent benevolence of that concession was somewhat mitigated by the Governors’ next decision: “It was definitely decided that rest room facilities could not be provided for colored students in the Union Building.” In other words, they could have their banquet but anyone needing to use a bathroom would have to leave the Union and scurry to another building. The Governors naturally decreed “that colored students could not attend social functions with white students” in the Union. It was, however, grudgingly conceded, and grudgingly expressed, “that in case the negroes insist on participating in the use of the lounge facilities,” a marked chair or divan could be set aside for them.42 In the 1940s, the Oklahoma legislature had mandated harsh daily fines against any administrator who enrolled a black student in a white school (or vice versa), against any teacher who taught in a mixed-race classroom, and against any student who willingly sat in such a classroom. Although the law did not specify segregated library facilities, the University felt it necessary to reserve a separate table in the library for McLaurin. Other areas of University life were also problematic. What about use of the library? The arrangement made when McLaurin was the only black student at the University might serve for one student or even for half a dozen, but as the black population grew, it was no longer adequate. Blacks were then allowed to study in the reference room, but in November 1949, some of them complained that the noise and confusion inhibited their ability to study. The librarian said he was aware of the situation and that “the complaint was justified,” but limited space and the segregation policy meant that there was little he could do. Cross weighed several options and then ordered that black students could study in the main reading room at tables marked for their use, even though reserving places for blacks would worsen already crowded conditio
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