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• 1 media/image56.png 2021-08-26T12:00:07-07:00 1951 - Harvey Beech (1924-2005), James L. Lassiter (1909-2003), J. Kenneth Lee (1923-2018), Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), and James Robert Walker (1924-1997 ) 4 Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd McKissick, and James Robert Walker enroll in UNC’s School of Law--the first Black students to attend courses at the University. plain 2021-09-02T07:45:59-07:00 01/01/1951 Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd McKissick, and James Robert Walker enroll in UNC’s School of Law--the first Black American students to attend courses at the University. 
  
  In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was legal so long as equal facilities were provided for both races. Because the law school’s facilities at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) did not equal those at Chapel Hill, a federal court ruled in March 1951 that the white school must admit Black students. This ruling also applied to the medical school as North Carolina funded only one medical school. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed all forms of segregation in the public schools in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and federal courts ordered the admission of Black undergraduates to the University the following year that Black Americans were admitted as undergraduates, although enrollment remained low for many years.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  SOURCES
  
  Drayton, Marquise. “50 Black History Firsts at UNC.”  Blackink, 21 Nov. 2017,https://uncblackink.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/50-black-history-firsts-at-unc/.
  
  “First Black Law Students” in “African Americans and Integration.”  The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History. 2006. Carolina Digital Library and Archives, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/show/integration/the-first-black-law-students-i.
  
  “First Black Medical Students” in “African Americans and Integration.”  The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History. 2006. Carolina Digital Library and Archives, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/show/integration/oscar-diggs-and-james-n--slade.  
  
  “First Black Undergraduate Students” in “African Americans and Integration.”  The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History. 2006. Carolina Digital Library and Archives, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/show/integration/leroy-frasier--john-lewis-bran.
  
  Nixon, Donna L.  Law School First – The African Americans Who Integrated UNC-Chapel Hill.  Kathrine R. Everett Law Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2020, https://integration.law.unc.edu/.