Texas Originals

Heman Marion Sweatt

December 11, 1912–October 3, 1982

When Heman Sweatt, a Black postal employee, applied to The University of Texas School of Law in 1946, officials rejected him because of his race. But Sweatt was not deterred. In fact, he had already volunteered to serve as the NAACP’s plaintiff in a suit to desegregate the law school. His qualifications included not only a college degree but also the courage and determination to endure four years of trials and the inevitable threats and vandalism.

Sweatt’s upbringing prepared him for the challenge. His father, a charter member of Houston’s NAACP branch, had set an example of social activism for his children. Heman encountered another powerful influence at Wiley College, where the charismatic English professor Melvin Tolson exhorted students to challenge discrimination. Sweatt’s attorney, Thurgood Marshall, also inspired confidence, for he had already argued civil rights cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the NAACP.

To keep Sweatt and other Black students out of The University of Texas, state officials built what would become Texas Southern University, but the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Sweatt v. Painter opened UT’s law school to African Americans and established an important precedent for Brown v. Board of Education.

Sweatt attended but did not finish law school. He later earned a master’s degree in Atlanta, where he had a successful career with the Urban League.

For More about Heman Sweatt

The Tarlton Law Library’s Jamail Center for Legal Research at UT Austin houses court documents, correspondence, and materials related to Heman Sweatt and has developed a digital guide to the Sweatt v. Painter case. Similar materials and documents from the early civil rights movement are housed in the Briscoe Center for American History.

Photographs of Heman Sweatt can be found on UNT’s Portal to Texas History courtesy of the Austin History Center.

In 1987, the University of Texas renamed a historic section of campus formerly known as the "Little Campus" to the Heman Sweatt Campus, and a year later the university dedicated a historical marker to Sweatt in front of the Arno Nowotny building. A plaque memorializing Heman Sweatt was also installed in front of the Travis County Courthouse in 2005, which was officially renamed the Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse a few months later.

Selected Bibliography

Gillette, Michael L. "Heman Marion Sweatt: Civil Rights Plaintiff." In Black Leaders: Texans for their Times, edited by Alwyn Barr and Robert A. Calvert, 157–188. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1981.

Gillette, Michael L. "Blacks Challenge the White University." In The Texas Book: Profiles, History, and Reminiscences of the University, edited by Richard A. Holland, 141–152. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.

Krochmal, Max.  Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Lavergne, Gary M. Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road to Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

Pitre, Merline.  In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900–1957. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.

Shabazz, Amilcar. Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 

Listen to the audio

Heman Sweatt at the Registration Office at The University of Texas at Austin, 1950. Courtesy of the Austin History Center and The Portal to Texas History.

Heman Sweatt at the Registration Office at The University of Texas at Austin, 1950. Courtesy of the Austin History Center and The Portal to Texas History.