By Benjamin Kinsey
Ada Lois Sipuel is a fearless lady who made sure nothing could stand in her way of getting an appropriate education. Sipuel is the first African American women to be admitted into the University of Oklahoma Law School. Sipuel did, however, have to put up a fight for this opportunity. She went through multiple court cases, including at the Supreme Court, after the University of Oklahoma denied her admittance. This of course being in 1940 when racism still ran rabid, segregation was a matter of fact, and both of these ideas were evident within the Oklahoma judicial system.
I sit here on the “fratio” of FarmHouse Fraternity in awe over the evidence of racism presented in the Ada Lois Sipuel Archive on Digital Prairie. Ms. Lois was treated like she was not even a human. The Board of Regents of Education in Oklahoma argue again and again that Sipuel does not have the right to “demand an education” from the University of Oklahoma Law School, an all-white department, but also that she doesn’t have the right to demand an equal education. However, Sipuel’s lawyer stands upon the fourteenth amendment to present their case.
Ada Lois Sipuel was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma. She attended Langston University and was a top student. After completing two years of school she applied to the University of Oklahoma Law School with all the needed credentials and requirements…. except for one… being of the white race. Although Sipuel had a flawless resume and transcript one that included only good moral character she was declined admission due to the color of her skin. Sipuel’s transcript was reviewed by the Dean of the School of Law, the Dean of Admissions, and the President who all found the transcript with the correct admissions requirements. However, Sipuel was “arbitrarily refused admission to the school.” In other words, they deliberately refused Ms. Sipuel on no grounds other than the color of her skin. Because the University of Oklahoma refused her admission and there is no other University that is “separate but equal” Ms. Sipuel filed a case against the University to let her study there.
The defendant, University of Oklahoma Law School, admitted to the court that Sipuel met all academic and moral requirements for admission in their response to the writ of mandamus. However, they argued
under the constitutional and statutory provisions of the State, hereinafter cited and reviewed (paragraphs 14-21 hereof), only white persons are eligible for admission to said school.
So instead of just allowing Sipuel to attend school at the University of Oklahoma the state later built a separate but not equal facility named Langston University School of Law. Sipuel did attend this “school,” which was temporarily housed within the capital building itself, but quickly filed another case due to the school being similar but nowhere close to equal.
In this second case the State Board of Regents argued
the State Regents for Higher Education are not required by the constitution of the United States to Establish and maintain a school of law in this State for negroes, equipped and ready for operation, until; a demand is made on them by a qualified negro for training in law, and a reasonable time is thereafter afforded them to establish said school.
Although this statement is consistent with the laws of the state, Sipuel was a qualified student for whom a separate school was not created in a “reasonable [amount of] time,” to say nothing about is equality with the school she had applied to. Which is why the second case was filed. There had been no progress made from the ruling of the first case. The Board later argued that establishing another school would force them “to abandon our present public policy of segregation”; whether or not to allow Sipuel to study at the University of Oklahoma is their choice and cannot be forced by Sipuel. As if allowing one black student would disrupt the entirety of the University. In Missouri, a delay of two semesters was endured by a student applying to their Lincoln University, which did successfully establish a class for black students by February 1, 1941. The Board argued that Sipuel did not apply to the agency (State Regents for Higher Education) charged with providing for the functions and courses of study of the several state institutions of higher learning. They claimed this case was “essentially an attack upon the whole policy of segregated education.” Ultimately, the Board of Regents claimed that because Missouri and Tennessee did not have a board in place their hands were basically tied; they had to allow black students into their schools. But because Oklahoma has such a Board they have the decision to allow or decline Sipuel’s request.
On January 14, 1946, the petitioner, a Negro, cocededly qualified to receive the professional legal education offered by the State, applied for admission to the School of Law of the University of Oklahoma, the only institution for legal education supported and maintained by the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma. Petitioner’s application for admission was denied, solely because of her color.
Petitioner then made application for a writ of mandamus in the District Court of Cleveland County, Oklahoma. The writ of mandamus was refused, and the Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma affirmed the judgment of the District Court.
Sipuel’s lawyer argued against the statements made by the Board of Regents by quoting the fourteenth amendment. He said,
Distinctions on the Basis of Race and Color are forbidden under our laws. One of the most firmly entrenched principles of American constitution.
Additionally, he stated
the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were specifically added to the Constitution to give Negroes full citizenship rights.
But after enjoying a long period of unchallenged superiority over another race through slavery and racism, white state officials created laws that regained their superiority after black people had been “set free” under the fourteenth amendment. The state of Oklahoma Board of Regents admitted that they had a duty to supply Sipuel any educational privileges to which she may be entitled. However, she could not insist upon admission to an institution of higher learning maintained for persons of the white race, they maintained, until she had formally made such a request to the University and afforded it a reasonable opportunity to comply with the request.
Finally, on June 12, 1947 the Supreme Court of the United States granted a rehearing for the reversal of the lower court’s decision as it violated the Constitution of the United States, after the state of Oklahoma made no move to create an equal facility and could not fund one. In Missouri and Tennessee, when an African American student applied to a school, the states created a separate but “equal” facility to accommodate the individual. However, the Oklahoma Board of Regents argued that there was no reason to allocate funds from other “needier” departments to one with no students. The Board also argued that they had not been given an appropriate amount of time to comply with the request. If the request still isn’t met after a certain allotted time, then the student would be entitled to an education at the said university.
All of the information within this archive is well organized and placed in the order it all took place. That made it easy to go through the information and get as pissed off as I am at what happened to Sipuel. One thing I did notice about the archive, however, is the constant misspellings and errors recorded within the “text” section of every document. Yes, this section did come in handy when the scanned documents were too blurry to read (another viable complaint), but it seems unprofessional and almost untrustworthy with so many words being mistyped. To return to the blurry scans, they were honestly a big problem. I would like to read from the original source and the scans quite honestly made it impossible without squinting or taking a break every two minutes from reading. Also a huge complaint is the documents themselves are not old enough to justify blurriness. This all took place in the 1940s. Personally, I do not think anybody should be blurred out after 1900.
Content-wise I would like there to be more information about Sipuel herself – either background or education to back up the evidence presented in the case, preferably both. Also the information presented is half of what was viewed in the court. Before opening any document, you get a slight preview that shows how many pages the document contains. In almost every document pages one through twenty are missing. Why? I have no idea. They are simply gone. All the documents say there are 64 pages of content, but you can only see twenty pages’ worth. Where does it all go? What information am I missing? Obviously the archive is either hiding all that happened or the curators are simply too lazy to scan in every page.
If I am being honest, nothing about this archive makes me happy. All of the content, like I said before, just pisses me off. The fact that at one point Americans, specifically Oklahomans, were so racist shocked me. I consider myself an Oklahoman, but honestly I would rather not be associated with people who would decline somebody’s education just because of their race. I would like to think being an Oklahoman is not associated with such ideas anymore, but considering the lack of knowledge about the case of Ada Lois Sipuel, which started down a path that led towards the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision, can we be so sure?
The events documented in this archive did happen more than 60 years ago. So the world is very different today, and much of what happened to Sipuel would be unthinkable in 2017. In fact, today you hear stories about the usual white applicant to Harvard (or some crazy ivy league school) with a perfect transcript and resume and hundreds of community service hours who gets declined in favor or admitting an international student with zero community service hours, a lacking resume, who meets a lower educational standard but gets in because the university has to supply some sort of diversity within its campus. The term “reverse racism” has been used to describe situations such as these. It seems crazy. Whites prioritized themselves over every other race for a long time. So it seems just that it’s the other races time to shine or to make up for lost time and be the prioritized group of people. However, is reverse racism really justified or should we criticize it? Questions that may never be answered appropriately.
America has changed to a point where the racists have now become a minority; they are now the outcasts, who get shoved into a box. Recent events prove this, such as alt-right members gathering for a rally and being almost immediately exposed to the world. Some of the men that participated lost their jobs and many lost respect within their communities. At the time the Ada Lois Sipuel case was happening these men would have been praised, but now they are public enemy number one. Our world today is on track to being more accepting than ever before when it comes to issues of race, sex, and sexual orientation. When did our nation change? When did we decide to accept the unacceptable? All these movements started with no-name people like Sipuel fighting for what they believe is right.
Fall 2017
archiveoklahoma.com 