Upon returning from serving abroad in the U.S. Army, nine Black men wanted to be admitted to the University of North Carolina (UNC) Law School. After the unsuccessful Epps v. Carmichael (1950) case, Floyd McKissick, Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, and Kenneth Lee, who were rejected because of their race by UNC's School of Law, once again sued the President of the University and the Dean of the Law School for admission. They claimed their rejection was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Because the state had established a segregated law school at North Carolina College (NCC) that allegedly provided an education equal to UNC's, the district judge accepted this defense, and the students lost. The students took the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The court found that UNC's Law School had more faculty and offered more opportunities and training than NCC's Law School. The court was convinced that the school for Black students was inferior to the one for white students, and so the previous judgment was reversed, and the students won. In June, UNC admitted its first three Black students, with the fourth enrolling soon after. Floyd McKissick, the lead plaintiff, went on to become the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He later developed Soul City, a Black industrial community financed via loan guarantees from the Nixon Administration. After a long life of activism, he passed away in 1991.