Heman Marion Sweatt was a postal worker from Houston, Texas, who integrated the University of Texas (UT) Law School in 1950.  Sweatt was born on December 11, 1912 in Houston, Texas.  He was the fourth child of James Leonard and Ella Rose Sweatt.  In 1930, he graduated from Jack Yates High School and earned a degree from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas in 1934, where he joined Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Soon after, Sweatt returned to Houston and worked as a mailman. During the early 1940s, he participated in voter-registration drives in the African American community and attended National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meetings.  As the local secretary of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, Sweatt helped challenge employment discrimination in the post office, where blacks were excluded from supervisory positions. In 1946, Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas School of Law, but was denied because of the state’s segregation laws.  On May 16, 1946, Sweatt, with the help of the NAACP, filed a lawsuit against Theophilus S. Painter, then UT President, and other officials in district court.  The presiding judge did not overturn Sweatt’s denial of admission.  Rather, he gave the state … Continue reading Heman Marion Sweatt (1912-1982)