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The Barbara Jordan Historical Essay Competition The Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights |
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The Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights
The symposium is presented annually in April by the Heman Sweatt Symposium Steering Committee, comprised of University of Texas at Austin students, faculty and staff. The symposium honors Heman Sweatt, the first African American admitted to The University of Texas at Austin Law School. All events are free and open to the public. Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School in 1946, but was denied admission on the basis of race. Mr. Sweatt, with the assistance of the NAACP, brought legal action against the University. In the landmark case, Sweatt vs. Painter, the United States Supreme Court ruled that separate law school facilities could not provide a legal education equal to that available at The University of Texas Law School, one of the nation's ranking law school. The Supreme Court ruling established an important precedent for the desegregation of graduate and professional schools.
Challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine, the court affirmed Mr. Sweatt's right to equal educational opportunity and in 1950 he entered the University of Texas School of Law. The Sweatt decision helped pave the way for African Americans' admission to formerly segregated colleges and universities across the nation, and led to the overturn of segregation by law in all levels of public education in the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education four years later. For information about this years Symposium, visit http://www.utexas.edu/events/hemansweatt. Past symposium topics include: 19th Annual, 2005: Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 18th Annual, 2004: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Decision 17th Annual, 2003: Progression versus Regression:The State of theAfrican American Community 16th Annual, 2002: Reparations: Does America Owe African Americans a Debt? 15th Annual, 2001: Capital Punishment in Texas: Is Justice Served? 14th Annual, 2000: The New Civil Rights: Fifty Years After the Sweatt Decision 13th Annual, 1999: The Role of Art and Artist in the Struggle: A Retrospective Look at Civil Rights in the 20th Century, 12th Annual, 1998: From Sweatt to Hopwood to Success: Solutions for Creating a Diverse University,
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