Texas Southern University

Overview

Texas Southern University is a public historically Black university in Houston, an important institution in the city’s Third Ward and, per Cite: The Architecture + Design Review of Houston writer Alvia Wardlaw, “the cultural and community center of” that neighborhood, contributing more than $500 million to the region’s economy and directly or indirectly supporting over 3,000 jobs. On March 7, 1927, the Houston Independent School District board voted to establish racially separate junior colleges, creating Houston Junior College (later the University of Houston) and Houston Colored Junior College, which first held classes in the evenings at Jack Yates High School and was later renamed Houston College for Negroes, the direct predecessor of Texas Southern University.

Sweatt v. Painter and the University’s Creation

Texas Southern’s creation was a direct response to Heman Marion Sweatt, an African American man who applied to the University of Texas School of Law in February 1946 and was denied admission because of his race. Sweatt sued, and rather than integrate the law school, the state moved to create a separate one: the Fiftieth Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 140 on March 3, 1947, authorizing what became Texas State University for Negroes, built around the existing Houston College for Negroes on land donated by Hugh Roy Cullen.