"The One Best Way"

Last week the first major cracks appeared in the wall of Jim Crow education:

P:Delaware, one of 17 states with Jim Crow laws, announced that it would admit Negro students to the University of Delaware to any course not offered by the Delaware State College for Negroes. The trustees said they had taken the hint from the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in the Ada Sipuel case (TIME, Jan. 19).

P:The University of Maryland, which quietly admitted its first Negro to the law school 13 years ago, and has already graduated four, now has 23 Negro law students. Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, a private school under no legal compulsion to admit Negroes, has also admitted "a few" Negroes into graduate work.

P:The University of Arkansas, which recently refused to admit a Negro law student, said that it would reconsider if he reapplied. He could use the law library and study under the regular faculty--but in a separate classroom. Negro undergraduates, however, will still be refused.

P:Oklahoma, which had jerry-built a law school for Negroes following the Sipuel decision, again refused to admit Ada Sipuel* to the regular University of Oklahoma law school. But when seven more qualified Negroes applied for Oklahoma graduate schools, a state regent urged that Negro graduates be admitted to Oklahoma--just to save the state money.

P:In Missouri, where a "separate but equal" law school has had its longest test, the powerful St. Louis Post-Dispatch pronounced it a "mistake." Said the PD: it costs only $228 a year to educate each white law student at the University of Missouri. But the state must pay $807 for each law student in the separate school--and the 44 Negroes still don't get a really equal education. Admitting Negroes to University of Missouri graduate schools, said the PD, was "the one best way" to correct an "expensive error."

*Now Mrs. Warren Fisher, bride of a graduate of Oklahoma's Langston University for Negroes.

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