One & Only

When Oklahoma set up its segregated Langston University Law School (for Negroes), as a result of the controversial Ada Lois Sipuel case* (TIME, Jan. 19, 1948), soft-spoken Theophilus M. Roberts, 34, was the first student to enroll. He was also the last; other Oklahoma Negroes would have none of it. So Theophilus Roberts, working as a waiter to pay his way, had a three-man faculty to teach him.

Last week Roberts polished off his first examinations with above-average grades, and Langston Law School closed for good. Next autumn, under a new state law, Roberts will be able to continue his studies at the University of Oklahoma. But he will still be alone, in separate classrooms or on a separate schedule.

* In which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma would have to furnish Ada Sipuel, barred from the University of Oklahoma Law School because she was a Negro, an equivalent legal education.

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