In October 1945, the NAACP wanted to win a desegregation lawsuit in Oklahoma. Their attorneys asked a law student named Lemuel Sipuel to serve as the plaintiff.  Because Sipuel wanted to avoid putting his legal career on hold, he declined. His younger sister, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, stepped forward, instead. As expected, despite her outstanding qualifications, the University of Oklahoma denied her application to their law school because of her race.  The university’s president told her that state law allowing for segregated schools forced him to reject her. Sipuel Fisher, represented by Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, sued saying there were no separate but equal opportunities for her to study law in Oklahoma. The District Court ruled that Sipuel Fisher didn’t inform the state that she planned to study law before applying to OU, so they had no obligation to establish a “separate but equal” law school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld this ruling. The NAACP appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in Sipuel Fisher’s favor because there were no separate state law schools for Black students in Oklahoma. Instead of admitting Sipuel Fisher to OU, the State Regents for Higher Education quickly established the Langston University School of Law for Black students. This hastily-created school had only a few part-time faculty and few resources. It could not provide Black students an equal education. Sipuel Fisher refused to attend. She and her lawyers filed a new lawsuit, Fisher v. Hurst. [248 words]