Esther McCready was a Black woman who met all the requirements for admission to the University of Maryland's School of Nursing. She applied but was refused admission because of her race. McCready sued to compel the governing board and officers to consider her application as a first-year student and admit her. The court ruled against her, so she appealed. In August 1949, the University of Maryland offered McCready a course in nursing at Meharry College in Tennessee, but she declined the offer. The appellate court found that the nursing school at Meharry was superior to the University of Maryland’s nursing school, but that is not what McCready wanted. She asked for an education provided by a state institution in Maryland. McCready won the case with the help of NAACP attorneys Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, Robert L. Carter, and Donald Gaines Murray. Murray was the lead plaintiff in the 1936 case Pearson v. Murray. McCready graduated with her nursing degree in 1953, passed the state nursing boards on her first try, and went on to have a lengthy and successful career. In 2015, the University of Maryland awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Public Service in recognition of her noteworthy contributions to the school and her field.