Updated Aug. 14, 1 p.m.: The chorus calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the University of Texas at Austin’s current policy allowing race to be a factor in admissions decisions has been joined by the family of Heman Sweatt, who was famously denied access to the University of Texas School of Law in 1946 because he was black.
Sweatt paved the way for black people to be admitted to UT’s law school by going before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950 and successfully challenging the “separate but equal” policy that had been used to justify sending him to law school in Houston at what became Texas Southern University.
