t 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, but no one ever discovered that it was in violation of due process until recently . . ." (Emphasis supplied.)
Hawkins went back to Washington once again, but the Earl Warren court was exhausted. It sent Hawkins to a segregationist federal district judge, Dozier DeVane, who continued to stall Hawkins. The Board of Control, meanwhile, stiffened the entrance requirements past the point where Hawkins was able to pass them.
In June 1958, nine years after filing his application, Hawkins gave up. He sacrificed his own ambition to the cause, stipulating that if DeVane ordered Florida's graduate schools to accept all qualified black applications he would withdraw his. The UF law school admitted its first black student three months later. There was no disorder, no boycott, no mass exodus by whites.
Hawkins' family had suffered. To save his wife's Lake County teaching job, they had to pretend to be separated and then divorced. Many nights, she drove furtively to Daytona Beach to visit him. A niece, Gloria Barton, rode along. "My job," she said in a recent interview, "was to keep her awake."
Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, a particularly notorious racist, jailed Hawkins' nephew as a rape suspect. That was too much for Collins, who intervened. McCall let the nephew go and framed a mentally retarded white youth, Jesse Daniels, who was railroaded into a mental hospital for 14 years. Freed eventually by court order, Daniels was compensated by the Legislature.
Virgil Hawkins went to Boston, where he drove a cab, waited on tables and did other odd jobs to finance a degree from the New England School of Law in 1964.
But Florida refused to let him take its bar examination because the New England school was not accredited until after he had graduated. He had reached the dead end of a long, bitter road.
Or so it seemed until the Florida Supreme Court, in 1974, ordered Ben Ervin, the brother of Justice Richard Ervin (the former attorney general) admitted to the Bar without having to retake the examination. He had flunked it four times