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THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT ADMITTED to the University of Arkansas after Reconstruction was Silas H. Hunt, who enrolled at the School of Law in January 1948. That simple fact, and the university's story of how this early instance of desegregation was achieved, have been related in prior articles and books.1 Less well-known to students of civil rights or Arkansas history are the stories of some other African-American pioneers-one who preceded Silas Hunt in challenging segregation at the law school and the five who quickly followed in Hunt's footsteps.
By admitting Silas Hunt, the University of Arkansas intended to forestall a suit. Robert A. Leflar, the dean who admitted Hunt, was concerned that the university's reputation and relations between African-American and white Arkansans would be harmed by such a suit.2 The United States Supreme Court had decided in 1938 that, in the absence of a state-supported black law school, the University of Missouri must admit an African American, Lloyd Gaines, to its School of Law.3 Two other suits, against the University of Oklahoma School of Law and the University of Texas School of Law, were in progress. Leflar's concerns were valid, then, since Arkansas, too, lacked a black law school.4 All three cases had been brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as part of its attack on the "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896 by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.5
Leflar had to convince the university's board of trustees, its incoming president, and Arkansas governor Ben Laney that desegregation, at least at the graduate level, was inevitable. His argument succeeded, but it depended on the school maintaining a form of internal segregation. African- American students would be taught in a separate classroom, work in a separate study room, and not have direct access to the library or use of the school's student bathrooms. As much as possible, the rituals of segregation would apply.6
On January 30, 1948, the University of Arkansas announced it would admit "qualified Negro graduate students."7 But it was not Silas Hunt as much as L. Clifford Davis who prompted this action. The announcement stated that Davis, a young man who had repeatedly attempted to enroll at the school, would be admitted if he...