Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas

Black Equality Versus White Power

In Beaumont, the admission of blacks to Lamar caused emotional anger among whites; girls were more favorable to desegregation than boys.
Two white students left Lamar in protest of black students attending.
- One student couldn't stand Negroes in his English class and never returned after the instructor's response.
- Another student, around 50 years old in a shop course, felt too old to attend school with "niggers."
Black students transitioned from exclusion to reluctant acceptance at Lamar, still facing discrimination and prejudice.
Winona Frank, a light-skinned Creole, felt whites staring and talking behind her back, excluding her from groups.
Her husband, Edward, more racially identifiable, caused a sensation when they walked hand-in-hand to classes.
An instructor, unaware of Frank's race, questioned her relationship with her husband and treated her with less respect upon learning they were married.
Frank and five other black students persevered and received degrees from Lamar in May 1958, earning adulation in the black community.
Bell, Flanagan, Frank, Rice, and Vincent (education majors) and Randolph (business major) became Lamar's first black graduates.

Trouble in Texarkana and the State Repression of the NAACP

The fight to open Texarkana Junior College (TJC) was the first continuously active campaign to desegregate a public institution of higher education in the state after Heman Sweatt filed his suit against the University of Texas, ultimately it was the NAACP's most difficult and disastrous battle.
Blacks began discussing applying to TJC as early as 1948 through the influence of A. Maceo Smith and John J. Jones.
The Bruce v. Stilwell lawsuit was dismissed because the plaintiffs hadn't appealed to the State Board of Education.
John J. Jones sought to win a victory against segregation at TJC.
During the opening week of the 1952 summer session, nine Dunbar graduates sought admission to TJC.
The school board approved a biracial negotiating committee to address the matter.
TJC district officials used divisive tactics to frustrate the petitioners' purpose.
One proposal suggested white students attend in the morning and black students in the afternoon, maintaining racial separation while using the same facilities, curriculum, and teachers.
Black committee members rejected this scheme.
Another proposal involved constructing a new, separate but equal building for black students, which they also refused.
The board authorized the addition of classrooms to Dunbar High School, creating a black branch of TJC, but no students enrolled.
The branch school was closed, and teachers were given jobs in the high school.
Tate praised John Jones's leadership for the community's cohesiveness in desegregating TJC.
Judge Joe Sheehy dismissed the Whitmore v. Stilwell suit on technical grounds, questioning the applicants' qualifications and Dunbar's accreditation.
The Fifth Circuit Court overturned the case, declaring TJC's use of race as an admissions criterion unlawful.
NAACP leaders recruited students from Dunbar's class of 1956 to apply to TJC.
Stilwell and board member Bill Williams encouraged massive resistance in the area.
Texarkana erupted in violence and protests when black students presented themselves for registration.
Death threats against blacks were rampant.
A shotgun blast was fired into an NAACP leader's service station, and a cross and a Negro were burned in effigy on campus.
Stilwell exhorted a Citizens' Council meeting, asserting that admitting blacks would lower educational standards and lead to desegregation of grade schools.
Whites mobbed the entrance of TJC, protesting against black students.
Gray and Poston, facing the mob, were pelted with rocks and one was kicked, necessitating a taxicab rescue.
Seven black teenagers were arrested for throwing rocks at white youths who taunted them.
The Citizens' Council's "peaceful riot" led blacks to back off the desegregation campaign.
Jones and Tate filed a motion citing Stilwell and Williams with contempt of court.
Assistant Attorney General L. W. Gray hauled Jessalyn Gray, her father Clarence, Steve James Poston, and his mother Rosa before a court of inquiry.
Frightened, the Grays and Postons stated they knew nothing about the lawsuit and hadn't retained Tate.
Clarence Gray testified he hadn't given permission for a lawsuit.
Steve Poston denied knowing Jones was an NAACP leader or attending meetings.
Rosa Poston expressed her desire for her son to attend TJC for financial reasons.
Gray and Poston's disclosure demolished the case before Sheehy.
Sheehy allowed TJC's lawyer to show the petitioners didn't wish to sue Stilwell and Williams.
Tate testified he'd never seen his clients and Jones was his sole contact.
A. H. Jones and John Montgomery's testimony caused Tate's argument to crumble.
Sheehy rebuked Tate for not ensuring proper employment by his clients.
Eight years of litigation to open TJC ended.
The NAACP had moved teenagers like chess pieces in a gambit where their lives and means of survival could be taken away.
The Grays and Postons made a costly strategic retreat due to threats from white supremacists.
TJC remained off-limits to black folks until 1963.

State of Texas vs NAACP

The defeat in Judge Sheehy's Tyler courtroom marked only the first act in a farce of monumental proportions.
A temporary injunction hearing began in the case The State of Texas v. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a corporation, et al.
At issue was the continued existence of the NAACP in Texas and the right of citizens in a democracy to protest and change the status quo.
The case followed similar prosecutions that year in Alabama, Louisiana, and other southern states.
Alabama judge granted a temporary restraining order against NAACP for operating as business without registering.
The judge ordered the NAACP to turn over various records, including its membership lists for all branches in the state.
NAACP refused to give up lists, and judge cited contempt of court, imposed stiff fines, and maintained injunction barring it from collecting dues or accepting contributions.
Legal action between state and NAACP continued for 8 years, during which time NAACP ceased to function in Alabama.
Louisiana used old anti-Klan law to ban NAACP until leaders turned in branch membership lists.
Numan V. Bartley wrote, "The war on the NAACP represented the gravest overt threat to basic civil liberties during the 1950s."
Thurgood Marshall called the Tyler trial the "greatest crisis" in the organization's history.
The scheme to repress the NAACP sprung from the white supremacist's elemental belief that blacks accepted inequality in educational opportunity and other public goods and services because they were smart enough to know that whites were a superior race and deserved what they had and that blacks, being an inferior race, knew they did not deserve to have absolute equality.
Texas attorney general Shepperd, Governor Shivers, and other segregationists genuinely believed that Communists, through the NAACP, had stirred up blacks, aiming ultimately to pollute the social and biological essence of the master race.
Prior to appearing before Judge Otis Dunagan, Shepperd engaged a team of lawyers and a former FBI agent to investigate the NAACP.
Sterling Fulmore Jr. submitted an interoffice memorandum titled "N.A.A.C.P. Communist Front Affiliation."
He provided details tying key NAACP activists to Communists and subversive groups.
Fulmore cited U. Simpson Tate, Juanita Craft, Lulu B. White, Kenneth Lamkin, and Arthur DeWitty for involvement with the Harlem-based Civil Rights Congress (CRC).
Attorney General Tom Clark and the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities found the CRC "to be controlled by individuals who were either members of the Communist Party or openly loyal to it."
The CRC dissolved in 1956.
Fulmore's memorandum drew from the study "Individuals from Texas Reported as Having Been Affiliated with Communist-Front Organizations-As Compiled from Official Government Reports."
The document identified over 200 Texans from various ethnic, educational, and occupational backgrounds.
Shepperd had considered linking his assault on the NAACP to the Cold War by adding to the list of charges violations of the Communist Control Act of 1954, but decided against it.
The case Shepperd did undertake alleged that the NAACP had "exceeded the bounds of propriety and law."
He asked for an injunction against the operation of the civil rights organization and its legal arm the Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., known as the LDF, on the grounds that they had violated barratry laws against soliciting litigation; that the two groups were corporations organized under the laws of New York and were operating illegally in the state of Texas; and that, since they were "foreign" profit-making entities, they had evaded paying state franchise taxes.
Judge Dunagan approved an order restraining the NAACP for seven days until he could hear its answer to the charges.
A temporary injunction hearing was held on 1 October 1956 to decide whether the ban on association activities should be extended several more months until a permanent injunction hearing would be held.
In collaboration with Marshall and the LDF, Tate, Durham, Johns, Willard, and other Texas attorneys had pioneered a new kind of public-interest law practice in the state, and now a state court would scrutinize their practice from top to bottom.
Tate, in his eagerness to win victories against Jim Crow and show his colleagues the way forward, sometimes failed to heed special counsel Marshall's advice to exercise caution in his work against white supremacist laws.
To civil rights advocates, the Tyler trial was the most important court battle in the history of the state, except, perhaps, for the Sweatt trial.
The case named as defendants all 112 branches of the NAACP in Texas, the Texas State Conference of Branches, and the NAACP southwestern regional office.
Before the hearing, agents of the attorney general's office visited citizens who had challenged segregation at Texas colleges or grade schools, current and former plaintiffs in school desegregation cases, and the officers of more than a dozen NAACP chapters.
Tate denounced the use of state troopers who accompanied assistant attorney generals during their investigations.
Riley Eugene Fletcher, an assistant attorney general, began making unannounced visits to NAACP members in the Beaumont area.
He asked Ed Sprott Jr., president of the Beaumont NAACP branch, to produce all "papers, books, minutes [and] official correspondence" of the branch.
Fletcher went to the Brackeen residence, but a neighbor informed him it was out of state on vacation.
He then went to the law offices of Johns and Willard and showed the local attorneys who handled the Lamar State College case his "official visitation letter" and his identification card.
At his visit with Marion Lewis, Fletcher collected nine documents to photocopy.
Damon Davis, a Caucasian chemical engineer at the Gulf Oil refinery, and his wife, who was active in the membership committee, gave the men a chilly reception.
Fletcher visited Jessie Gardner, a black housewife and the secretary of the Port Arthur branch.
He began manually copying names from the membership rolls until he found his "eyes were failing."
He returned to his motel room just before midnight.
When the state attorney arrived at the house of Leroy Horton, the black refinery worker and president of the local NAACP branch met him in his yard and greeted him by name, saying he had been waiting for him to come all morning but had to leave for work.
At the home of the vice president, Dr. M. F. Harris, and his wife, the couple demanded to know what the investigation was about and whether the Citizens' Councils had also been targeted.
Later that night, Fletcher learned that newspaper reporters had discovered he was in town conducting anti-NAACP raids. The secrecy of his mission had been blown.
Assistant Attorney General John Davenport relieved him of carrying out his scheduled visits in the nearby town of Liberty and told him he "could come on home."
Davenport obtained from Judge Otis Dunagan in Tyler a temporary court order to shut down the operations of the NAACP.
In the days ahead, Shepperd and his battery of lawyers put together the material Fletcher collected in Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, with records that other assistant attorneys obtained in raids at the national New York offices of the NAACP and the LDF, at the large chapters at Houston and Dallas, along with material gathered from other local Texas branches such as Austin, El Paso, Texarkana, Mansfield, Fort Worth, Abilene, Monahans, Pecos, Odessa, Brownwood, San Angelo, Midland, Wharton, and Gainesville.
During the near month-long hearing, the state produced over five hundred exhibits and more than a million words of testimony that came primarily from its raids and three courts of inquiry.
Jessalyn Gray and Steve Poston testified, as they had at the Texarkana inquisition, that they had not authorized a suit to be filed against TJC.
Gray added that "she was so scared by the white officers wearing guns who summoned her to the court of inquiry that she would now be afraid to file a lawsuit to enter the college."
A contract dating back a decade in which Tate agreed to pay Heman Sweatt an $11,500$ stipend to support him and pay for his education once his lawsuit opened the University of Texas Law School was another major piece of damaging evidence against the NAACP.
Judge Dunagan rendered his decision restraining the NAACP and LDF from operating in the state of Texas until a final hearing could be held.
Judge Dunagan signed and entered a permanent injunction and ended the Texas v. NAACP affair.
The NAACP, after some internal wrangling, chose not to appeal the ruling.

Anti-NAACP efforts

In 1956, Jerry Sadler, an attorney and a 1946 gubernatorial candidate representing the tiny East Texas backwater of Percilla, announced plans to introduce two bills aimed at restricting the NAACP and nine bills directed at preserving school segregation.
The odious anti-NAACP measures, which followed examples set by other states, "would make it unlawful for any state or municipal government agency or any school to employ a member of the NAACP and would require all persons and organizations to register with the Secretary of State if their principal function is either to promote or to oppose racial integration."
In the wake of Dunagan's temporary injunction and prosegregation Price Daniel's win over the liberal Ralph Yarborough in the gubernatorial election, it must have seemed at the end of 1956 that Houston NAACP leader Christia Adair's prophecy that Texas would fall under the rule of the Citizens' Council was coming true.
A 20 December 1956 summit meeting of twenty of the 181 Texas legislators (31 senators and 100 members of the House) at Marshall, consolidated a core group around Sadler's bills in advance of the opening of the legislative session in January.
With its equal opportunity provision against those promoting or opposing racial integration, the notorious "thought permit" bill did not fare well. It was passed by the House, but when it went before a senate committee the members referred it to the new attorney general, Will Wilson, who declared it unconstitutional.
Huffman told his House colleagues; "We can take care of our Negro citizens; they don't want the trouble caused by the NAACP."
HB 32 passed in the House seventy-five to forty-nine.
A group of South and West Texas senators, who came to be known as the "filibusteros," opposed the bill.
Its leaders, Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio and Abraham Kazen Jr. of Laredo, both the sons of immigrant Catholics, took turns speaking continuously for thirty-six and one-half hours as part of a marathon filibuster that killed the anti-NAACP measure and led to the defeat of all but two prosegregation bills.
Gonzalez shrewdly observed to the press that "time worked in our favor. We did serve the purpose of focusing public opinion on this type of legislation."
With the NAACP humbled, the church stepped up to lead the opposition to racial extremism.
Organized labor also ended its virtual silence on the abuse of civil rights and liberties by the state and its citizens.
Rev. A. A. Lucas implored black ministers and lay leaders to be alert to "what's happening to our people" and to not create "a substitute for the NAACP" but to carry on its work.
In Fort Worth, the Texas State Council of Methodist Women approved a resolution against efforts to thwart the implementation of Brown.
Texas Council of Churches leader Harold Kirkpatrick got church leaders to barrage the legislature with telegrams opposing passage of the prosegregation bills.
Citizen Council aggression and state repression disrupted the NAACP's momentum and neutralized much of its local base, but the NAACP by no means disappeared.
In January 1958, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins wrote NAACP activist H. Boyd Hall, saying he knew "that the situation within the state conference and among the branches is not an easy one."
He nonetheless expressed his "hope that our Texas members and branches are going to snap out of it in 1958. Apparently they were a little dazed and confused by the 1957 situation, but by now they ought to be ready to go ahead."
Slowly the NAACP and the movement for civil rights in Texas did stumble to their feet. The bravery shown by blacks, especially the youth, in demanding their rights helped the association to resume its role in the political and legal arena.
An editorialist in the New York Post wrote:
Do the Jim Crow legions believe such victories [as Dunagan's order] can halt the drive for equality? We suggest they look at the photographs of the quiet, resolute Negro children defying jeers and violence and sadism. The NAACP may be hounded and driven underground; but who will smother the valiant kids, and who will say they can be permanently detoured by stones or injunctions? Some day they will be able to tell their own children of how they endured this ordeal. There will be few comparable moments of glory for the adult delinquents leading this desperate last stand of white supremacy.
With the images of courageous youth stoking the cause, the struggle to advance democracy continued.