Little Known Black History Fact - Black America 250: It was January 12, 1948 that the case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents was decided unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court, forcing the University of Oklahoma Law School to admit Ada Lois Sipuel, the school’s first African American student.

In 1946 Ada Lois Sipuel was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma law school on the basis of her race. Sipuel sued the school, alleging that because the state of Oklahoma did not provide a comparable facility for African American students under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” she would have to be admitted to the university. Sipuel was represented by lawyer and civil rights

activist Thurgood Marshall, the attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and lawyer Amos T. Hall. Losses in the lower courts prompted Miss Sipuel to take her case to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Oklahoma must provide instruction for African Americans that was equal to that of whites.

Little Known Black History Fact – Black America 250: It was January 12, 1948 that the case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents was decided unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court, forcing the University of Oklahoma Law School to admit Ada Lois Sipuel, the school’s first African American student.