A pivotal case, Sweatt compelled the Supreme Court to overturn segregation in state-supported higher education, foreshadowing full repeal of its “equal, but separate” doctrine.

Denied admission at the University of Texas School of Law in 1946 due to his race, Heman Sweatt, a Wiley College graduate and postal worker, obtained NAACP counsel and sued. Heeding the trial court's ruling, the state soon opened a black law school in Houston. It was vastly unequal, Thurgood Marshall argued. Both the Court of Civil Appeals and Texas Supreme Court rejected that argument. Marshall appealed to the US Supreme Court, where he emphasized the black school's inferior facilities and its students’ professional isolation. Several institutions, including the Department of Justice, filed ami curiae briefs. Thus convinced of the inequality, the Court ordered the School of Law to enroll Sweatt. Its order, however, did not overturn Plessy.