Donald Gaines Murray

Access Denied
A highly qualified Amherst College graduate who had been denied entry to the University of Maryland Law School in 1934, sued the university on the basis that he had been rejected solely because of his race. Murray was represented by civil rights activists Charles Houston, the special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Houston and Marshall argued that the lack of law schools for black students in the state left Murray with no other options. Out of state law schools for blacks did not match the academic caliber of the University's law school, and thus the University was violating the principle of “separate but equal.” Moreover, Marshall argued that the disparities between the "white" and "black" law schools were so great that the only remedy would be to allow students like Murray to attend the University's law school.

Legal Victory
The Baltimore City Court agreed and, upon appeal by the University of Maryland, so did the Maryland Court of Appeals. The University was ordered to admit Murray, and he became its first African American graduate in 1938. The university also officially opened its professional schools to African Americans.

This legal victory marked the first success of the NAACP's desegregation campaign, which culminated nearly 20 years later in Brown. Applauding Marshall's victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was "brutal and absurd," and argued that no one should object to the "presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college."

http://www.uscourts.gov/outreach/brown_journey.htm
Presents an overview of the Murray case and also places it in the context of other early civil rights trials that helped pave the way for the Brown ruling.

http://www.mcca.com/site/data/magazine/2004-05/prebrowntimeline.shtml
A detailed timeline of the most important court cases preceding Brown v. Board of Education.