Sweatt v. Painter

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: What was the “separate-but-equal” doctrine? Where and how did it originate? What impact did the doctrine have on African Americans?
• 2.: Read this document in conjunction with Charles Hamilton Houston’s “Educational Inequalities Must Go!” (1935). How was Sweatt v. Painter part of an overall strategy designed to challenge the separate-but-equal doctrine?
• 3.: What other developments in the 1940s perhaps contributed to a climate of opinion that led to the Court’s ruling in Sweatt v. Painter?
• 4.: How did Sweatt v. Painter (and other Court cases) pave the way for the Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education?
• 5.: What is the meaning of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Why was this clause at the center of the Court’s ruling in Sweatt v. Painter and other cases?