 that Florida blacks suffered, was public relations director of Bethune-Cookman College at Daytona Beach when he applied to the University of Florida law school in 1949.
Four other blacks applied with Hawkins to UF graduate programs. All were refused. They sued a month later in the Florida Supreme Court for an order requiring the UF to admit them. Only Hawkins would stay the long, discouraging course.
Florida offered to send them out of state, as other Southern states were doing, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional. The Board of Control voted to establish a segregated law school at FAMU, as Texas had done in a similar situation. Meanwhile, Hawkins could be admitted, but only temporarily, to the University of Florida. In 1950, in the first of its six rulings on the Hawkins case, the Florida Supreme Court told him it was that or nothing.
Hawkins sued again. Denied again, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned him down because he still didn't have a final judgment from the very clever justices of the Florida Supreme Court. On his third trip to Tallahassee, in June 1952, the Florida court finally refused him flatly. This time the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his case and others like it. "The judgments are vacated," it said of Hawkins and the others, "and the cases are remanded for consideration in light of the Segregation Cases decided May 17, 1954."
That should have been clear, but the Florida court remained evasive and defiant. By a 5-2 vote, it ordered Hawkins to resubmit his issues with emphasis on "conditions that now prevail." Meanwhile, a special master, Circuit Judge John A.H. Murphree, would take testimony at Gainesville on how Hawkins might be received at the university. Sitting with the Supreme Court on special assignment, Murphree had been one of the judges signing Terrell's screed in the bond validation case.
Hawkins went back to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had already ordered the University of Texas to admit a black law student. On March 12, 1956, it ordered Hawkins admitted to UF. "As this case involves the admission of a Negro to a graduate professional school, there is no reason for delay. He is entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates," the court said.
The news hit during an intense governor's race in which segregation had become the only issue, so far as Gov. LeRoy Collins' challengers were concerned. The Hawkins decision panicked even Collins, a moderate segregationist who eventually would become liberal on civil rights. He asked the U.S. Supreme Court for permission (it was denied) to let him argue in person for rehearing. He promised to ask for legislation if necessary. "We will continue to wage this fight by all legal and peaceful means," he said. "We will not surrender in our battle to protect our state's customs and traditions."
Neither would the Florida Supreme Court. Its last act of brazen defiance came in March 1957, when a majority opinion by Justice B.K. Roberts pronounced it "unthinkable" that the U.S. Supreme Court would actually intend to tell his court that it "does not have the right to control the effective date of its own discretionary process." Murphree's report, he said, predicted massive withdrawals and boycotts by white students if Hawkins were admitted. There would be violence, causing a "critical disruption of the university system." Hawkins would be admitted only when Florida was ready, not before.
Again, it was 5-2. "It is a fundamental truth," complained Justice E. Harris Drew in dissent, "that justice delayed is justice denied."
Roberts' opinion, however, had not been sufficiently sulfurous for Terrell, who spoke his mind in a memorable concurring opinion:
". . . (S)egregation is as old as the hills. The Egyptians practiced it on the Israelites; the Greeks did likewise for the barbarians; the Romans segregated the Syrians; the Chinese segregated all foreigners; segregation is said to have produced the caste system in India and Hitler practiced it in his Germany, bu