McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education - Not Separate But Still Unequal

George W. McLaurin, a young man of African descent pursuing his doctorate, secured admission to the Graduate School of Education of the University of Oklahoma shortly after the Court's decision in Sipuel. National legal and legislative institutions may have been moving away from segregationism, but many states, including Oklahoma, most certainly were not. The state's university system had grudgingly begun to accept African American students, but segregationism was alive and well on campus.

George McLaurin found his personal situation within the Graduate School of Education unbearable. Although he was allowed to attend the University of Oklahoma and, by his own stipulation, was not placed at a disadvantage in any way, the treatment he received was inhumane. McLaurin was forced to sit at a designated desk in an anteroom attached to the classroom where his fellow students sat, to use only a designated space in the mezzanine of the library, and to eat at a designated table and at a different time than his fellow students in the university's cafeteria.