A Step toward Brown v. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Her Fight to End Segregation by Cheryl Elizabeth Brown Wattley (review)

In A Step toward Brown v. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Her Fight to End Segregation, Cheryl Elizabeth Brown Wattley provides a detailed account of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher’s legal battles to gain entrance into the University of Oklahoma College of Law in the 1940s. Sipuel Fisher’s success served as a step toward the Brown decision and ultimately the end of legally mandated educational segregation.

Wattley, a legal scholar who formerly taught at the University of Oklahoma (OU), highlights the importance of Sipuel Fisher’s case, and, in Wattley’s words, emphasizes “[t]he humanness of her legal fight” (p. xii). Wattley notes that in the early twentieth century the NAACP focused on challenging segregation in graduate education because it was difficult for states to make the case that black students were provided “separate but equal” educational opportunities at the graduate level. The NAACP sought out potential plaintiffs who had the conviction and stamina to put up with a long legal process and personal attacks. They found a “‘natural’ plaintiff” in Sipuel Fisher (p. 72). Interestingly, Wattley suggests that Sipuel Fisher’s status as a married, middle-class woman made it somewhat easier for her than for her brother (who was the NAACP’s first choice) to sue because she could rely on her husband and father for financial support, but the book does not provide further gender analysis of Sipuel Fisher’s case.

The legal process was long and not straightforward. After being denied enrollment in January 1946, Sipuel Fisher sued the university. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found in 1948 that the state of Oklahoma was required to offer equal educational opportunities for all citizens. The response from the state was to create, in a matter of days, a new law school that was run by historically black Langston University and housed in the state capitol building. Sipuel Fisher and the NAACP sued again, arguing that a school with three part-time faculty members and one student could not be viewed as equal to the established OU law school. This time, Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP counsel, introduced the idea that segregation itself should be viewed as unconstitutional. A county district judge decided against Sipuel Fisher. Undeterred, the NAACP continued to challenge educational segregation in Oklahoma until finally the legislature succumbed to pressure from university administrators and to the prospect of never-ending legal battles and amended state law to allow black students to participate in graduate-level education. Sipuel Fisher enrolled at OU in the summer of 1949, completed her degree, practiced law, and later served on the board of regents of the university.

The book is strongest when discussing the legal reasoning in the multiple cases that ultimately led to Sipuel Fisher’s admission. Wattley shows little interest in historiographical questions or scholarly debates, but the book succeeds in demonstrating the importance of this case in breaking down educational segregation and in honoring the legacy of a woman who deserves to be better remembered.