The Augusta Courier

Open Schools To Negroes, Virginia Told

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Sept. 5-A three-judge Federal Court Tuesday broke Virginia's historic segregated education barrier and ordered the University of Virginia to admit qualified Negroes to its graduate school.

In a brief hearing the court directed the University to admit Gregory Swanson, a practicing attorney of Martinsville, Va., who was denied admission last July because he is a Negro.

Swanson said he would go ahead with plans to enter the school Sept. 14. He would thus become the first of his race to study at the University founded by Thomas Jefferson.

The case, in which Virginia Atty. Gen. J. Lindsay Almond conceded there was no defense in the light of recent U. S. Supreme Court holdings, gave promise of other similar action to follow in Virginia and the South.

Thurgood Marshall, of New York chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he thought six months would see parallel action in a number of Southern States. Cases are under study now, he said, in the States where Negroes are denied equal opportunity under the 14th Amendment.

Virginia has no law school for Negroes, but had contributed to the costs of their education in law in other states.