Pillars of Progress

On September 15, 1953, Clara Dell Constantine, Martha Jane Conway, Charles Vincent Singleton, and Shirley Taylor attempted to enroll at Southwestern Louisiana Institute, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, but were denied because of their race. On their behalf, attorneys Thurgood Marshall, a future appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, and civil rights pioneer A.P. Tureaud filed a class action complaint in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on January 4, 1954, seeking admission to the all-white school. A three-judge panel of Wayne G. Borah, Benjamin C. Dawkins, Jr., and Edwin F. Hunter, Jr., ruled for the plaintiffs, and on July 16, 1954, the court permanently prohibited SLI from refusing to admit them, or any other Negro citizen of the state residing in Southwest Louisiana and similarly qualified and situated, on the basis of race or color. On September 10, 1954, SLI became the first all-white, state-supported college in the Deep South to desegregate when 76 African American students, including the four plaintiffs in Constantine v. SLI, registered for classes. Although desegregation was accomplished without the violence that later accompanied first-time admissions of African American students at other southern schools, turmoil on SLI's campus took its toll, and by mid-term the number of African American students had markedly decreased.

Lafayette, Louisiana · United States