New from the University of Oklahoma Press:
A Step toward Brown v. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Her Fight to End Segregation, by Cheryl Elizabeth Brown Wattley (University of North Texas, Dallas, College of Law). A description from the Press:
In 1946 a young woman named Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (1924–1995) was
denied admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law because
she was African American. The OU law school was an all-white institution
in a town where African Americans could work and shop as long as they
got out before sundown. But if segregation was entrenched in Norman, so
was the determination of black Oklahomans who had survived slavery to
stake a claim in the territory. This was the tradition that Ada Lois
Sipuel sprang from, a tradition and determination that would sustain her
through the slow, tortuous path of litigation to gaining admission to
law school. A Step toward Brown v. Board of Education—the first
book to tell Fisher’s full story—is at once an inspiring biography and a
remarkable chapter in the history of race and civil rights in America.
Cheryl Elizabeth Brown Wattley gives us a richly textured picture of
the black-and-white world from which Ada Lois Sipuel and her family
emerged. Against this Oklahoma background Wattley shows Sipuel (who
married Warren Fisher a year before she filed her suit) struggling
against a segregated educational system. Her legal battle is situated
within the history of civil rights litigation and race-related
jurisprudence in the state of Oklahoma and in the nation. Hers was a
test case organized by the NAACP (National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People) to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court and, as precedent, strike another blow against “separate but
equal” public education.
Fisher served as both a litigant, with
Thurgood Marshall for counsel, and, later, a litigator; both a plaintiff
and an advocate for the NAACP; and both a student and, ultimately, a
teacher of the very history she had helped to write. In telling Fisher’s
story, Wattley also reveals a time and a place undergoing a profound
transformation spurred by one courageous woman taking a bold step
forward.
A blurb:
“Cheryl Wattley has written a carefully researched and very relevant
account of the legal and human-relations significance of Ada Lois Sipuel
Fisher's trailblazing court case. But her book offers much more,
including the many compelling backstories that made Ada Lois a hero to
those of us who dared challenge racial segregation and discrimination in
Oklahoma and elsewhere. This book should be read by everyone,
especially legal scholars, civil rights activists, historians, social
scientists, and students.” —George Henderson
More information is available
here.
