Browse Exhibits (1 total)

On September 19th, 1950, after the culmination of a four year legal battle, Heman Marion Sweatt registered for classes at The University of Texas School of Law. The implications were enormous, Sweatt and his colleague George Washington Jr. became the first African-American students admitted to the University, and the Supreme Court decision in Sweatt vs. Painter created the precedent for the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. However, the community response was not harmonious. While the student body and The Daily Texan generally favored the integration of The University of Texas at Austin, hostility from the community manifested most notably in a large wooden cross wrapped in kerosene soaked rags and lit ablaze.

On October 18th, 1950 the student newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin, The Daily Texan, ran a small news feature on the front page, below the fold. The headline read "Cross is Burned Near Law School," and the Editorial Assistant, Charlie Lewis, detailed the discovery of a large wooden cross found burning near the Law Building. The article also covered the efforts to douse the flames and the graffiti "KKK" found painted multiple times around the steps of the Law Building. Although the institutional response was non-existent and no arrests were made in conjunction with the hate incident, the burning cross touched off a community conversation in the editorial section of the newspaper. For the next two weeks pg. 4 of The Daily Texan featured opinion pieces, reprints from larger publications, and short letters to the editor in the “Firing Line” section of the paper, all discussing the implications of the burning cross, the integration of the University, and the state of race relations in the South.

The coverage of the hate incident in The Daily Texan is significant because in the absence of an official University statement the student written and directed paper featured a variety of voices from the community discussing the incident and implications. The responses vary greatly—far from a pro-integration vs. pro-KKK debate, the Austin community contributed a variety of nuanced perspectives—on racial identity, minority status, divine law, and the pace of progress. While the dates of the paper allow for the chronological ordering of the articles, “Firing Line” editorials that respond directly to an article or another “Firing Line” are organized as such.