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UT Board of Regents opens UTEP to African-American students
On this day in 1955, the University of Texas Board of Regents voted to
permit Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) to
admit black students. This decision came shortly after the U.S. Supreme
Court had issued a supplementary ruling confirming its decision in
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which abolished segregation in
public education. On the local scene in El Paso, a black student, Thelma
Joyce White, had been denied admission to TWC for the 1954-55 school
year and had brought suit in federal court. Her attorneys, including
Thurgood Marshall, continued to press her suit, with the result that, on
July 18, Judge Robert E. Thomason issued a declaratory judgment
permanently enjoining the UT system from denying, on the basis of race,
any African-American student the right to study at Texas Western. The
plaintiff in this important case decided, however, to continue her
studies at New Mexico A&M, though her children attended UTEP. She died
in 1985. An academic support network for black students was founded at
UTEP in 1993 and named for her.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- WHITE, THELMA JOYCE
- CIVIL-RIGHTS MOVEMENT
- SEGREGATION
- AFRICAN AMERICANS
- MEXICAN AMERICANS
- THOMASON, ROBERT EWING
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Alfonso Steele, one of the last remaining San Jacinto veterans, dies (1911)
- Mysterious fires in North Texas (1860)
- Mundine proposes extending franchise to blacks and women (1868)
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