Separate but Equal

When the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of Texas to admit a Negro law student last June (TIME, June 12), it set other Southern states to anxious self-appraisal. The key point in the court's decision: if Negro education is "separate" (segregated), it must be equal in quality to that in white schools. On that principle, the University of Virginia has decided to admit a Negro to its law school this fall, and the attorney general of Tennessee has advised the University of Tennessee to do the same. In North Carolina last week, the decision went the other way.

Ruled Federal Judge Johnson J. Hayes: the eleven-year-old law school of the North Carolina College for Negroes, in Durham (26 students, six professors), is essentially just as good as the University of North Carolina's 105-year-old law school at Chapel Hill (280 students, ten professors). Therefore, concluded the court, the Chapel Hill law school has the right to turn Negro applicants away.

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