'Diverse in the Heart'

The Chronicle of Higher Education
November 21, 2010
A Texas admissions expert tells the long-forgotten tale of a pioneer in integration

By Eric Hoover
Austin, Tex.
Long before James Meredith became the first black man to enroll at the University of Mississippi, before a handful of black college students started a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., a 33-year-old mail carrier walked into the registrar's office at the University of Texas. His name was Heman Marion Sweatt, and he sought admission to the university's law school. He might as well have chosen to walk into a hurricane.
The year was 1946. Sweatt, a Houston native with a college degree, was qualified to enroll. Administrators denied him for only one reason: He was black.

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