Sweatt (Heman) Symposium

The Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights at the University of Texas at Austin started in 1987 as a way to address racial issues facing African-Americans in the community and legal system. Each year brings a new topic and new guest speaker, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, attorney Johnnie Cochran, and poet Nikki Giovanni.

The event is named after Heman Sweatt, the first African American admitted into the UT Law School. After applying to the University of Texas Law School in 1946 and having been denied admission on the basis of race, Mr. Sweatt and the NAACP sued the University in the landmark case, Sweatt vs. Painter. In 1950, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that separate law school facilities could not provide a legal education equal to that available at UT, making the case one of the first to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine.

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