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Writer's pictureKAYLA SLEEPER
Oct 19, 20215 min read

Virgil Hawkins: the Pioneer of Inclusion in the Legal Field You’ve Likely Never Heard of


Written by: Kayla Sleeper

Edited by: Sean Tonra





“After ten years of delaying tactics, they talk about gradualism and patience! How gradual can we be? I wish I were nine years younger.”

- Virgil Hawkins


“Justice delayed is justice denied.”

- William E. Gladstone


In May of 1949, thirty-nine year old Virgil Hawkins, director of public relations for Bethune Cookman College, and four other African American men were denied entry to the University of Florida College of Law—the only law school in Florida at the time. Told they held “all the scholastic, moral and other qualifications except as to race and color,” the school made no effort to hide their racially motivated reasoning. Hawkins, unwilling to accept University of Florida’s explicit dismissal of his right to attend the state institution, requested the Florida Supreme Court issue a writ of mandamus ordering the school to accept his admission, thus ensuing a nine-year legal battle he would never win. (1)

In Hawkins’ first of six appearances before the Florida Supreme Court, one of the options the Court proposed Hawkins do instead was attend the new Florida A&M University College of Law established for African Americans, arguing that this would satisfy equal protection rights granted under the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution. (The second option was attending a law school out of state; however, considering other all-white law schools might have denied him entry as well, Howard University, all the way in Washington, D.C., seemed the only plausible way to do that.) (1)

Yet unsurprisingly, the newly founded law school for African Americans in the early 1950s seemed to initially lack the resources to provide an adequate education for students. Even the Florida Supreme Court understood this, despite arguments that the school satisfied requirements of a ‘separate but equal’ education; in response to Hawkins calling FAMU College of Law a “purported school of law” in his second appearance before the court, the Florida Supreme Court told him that the facilities would open as soon as he sent in a “timely” application to FAMU. Not yet prepared for operation, the FAMU law school almost seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of keeping Hawkins—and other Black Americans—from the all-white University of Florida College of Law. Asked to obtain his law degree at an institution that thus existed in name only, Hawkins refused. (1)

FAMU law school would not go on to take its first class of students until 1951. (2) It took another two whole years for the school to acquire the resources to maintain a class of a few law students, and from the years 1954 to 1968, the school graduated just 57 students overall. (2,3) Furthermore, FAMU College of Law would not be accredited by the American Bar Association as a law school until 2004, following its reopening in 2002. (2)

Thus, access to the law education itself was not the only problem for Black Americans pursuing a career in the legal field. In June of 1949, just two months after Hawkins’ initial application to the University of Florida College of Law in April, a petition by the Florida State Bar Association was raised to the Florida Supreme Court to impose “mandatory membership” for lawyers to practice in Florida. Twenty years before in the 1930s, the Florida Supreme Court shut down the Florida Bar Association’s first proposal. Their second proposal was initiated in 1947, yet the Florida Supreme Court waited until this moment in time to approve the request. What could have changed the Court’s mind but the blooming saga of Virgil Hawkins’ lawsuits and court appeals? Or was it the promise of new generations of Black lawyers with the creation of FAMU law school? Whatever sparked the nerves of the white Floridian lawyers and Supreme Court justices, a growing apprehension of African Americans entering the legal field was clear. (4)

By April 1950, a year before the first FAMU College of Law class even began their law education, the Florida Bar was established as an “official arm of the Florida Supreme Court.” (4) African American citizens in the pursuit of a legal career were held back in any legal way possible, and Virgil Hawkins bore the brunt of this animosity, paving the way for Black lawyers after him. In 1958, the “Father of the Black legal profession in the state of Florida”—dubbed so by George Allen, the first Black law graduate of the University of Florida—was offered a deal by Justice Dozier DeVane: go to Court and enter a legal discussion surrounding his qualifications or DeVane would issue an order to the University of Florida to admit all qualified Black students upon the condition that Hawkins rescind his application. (5) (Another barrier added for Hawkins was the increase of the University of Florida admissions test score requirement to 250 in 1958. Hawkins’ initial 1949 application reported a score of 200.) (1)

Ultimately, Hawkins did so and sacrificed his attendance to University of Florida for the Black law students who would succeed him. He eventually obtained his law education from the New England Law School in Boston in 1961; however, his legal battles continued when the Florida Bar would not accept him for not attending an accredited institution. Hawkins could not practice his law degree in Florida until the Bar admitted him. In 1976, he initiated another appeal to the Florida Supreme Court under the grounds that had he been allowed to attend the University of Florida, an accredited university, eleven years prior, he would have been directly admitted into the Florida Bar. This ease of acceptance was known as “diploma privileges,” since no other qualification but graduating from the right school was necessary, and to make matters worse, the Florida Supreme Court admitted Benjamin Ervin, brother of a Florida Attorney General, to the Florida Bar in 1974, despite Ervin failing the Bar exam a total of four times. (1)

The coinciding times of Hawkins’ application to the University of Florida, the imposition of “mandatory membership” to the Florida Bar, and the creation of FAMU law school form a web of events that can begin to describe tangible effects of systemic racism still plaguing America today. Regardless of the founding of FAMU law school’s roots in segregation, it was no doubt able to become a beneficial institution for Black students seeking a career in the law, which made its defunding in 1965 a blow to the Black community. On the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition of discrimination no less, it was criticized for being exclusive to white students, and its funds were redistributed to Florida State University, whose population consisted of a majority of white students. (6)

We like to think that laws and regulations put in place by, not just legislature but courts as well, are put in place to implement some kind of order in our society. Yet even court rulings and laws with attractive wording can still impart damage to the very people they were supposed to protect—if those in power wish to do so. Even the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most championed legislatures that emerged from the Civil Rights Movement, was used to contribute to the removal of resources for Black students in the case of FAMU law school.

It is important to acknowledge not just the history of these barriers—barriers so explicitly impressed upon Virgil Hawkins—but also the remnants of such that affect Black students today. Based on their 2021 survey, the Florida Bar now consists of 81% white or Caucasian Americans and 4% African or Black Americans: disheartening numbers compared to Florida’s 75% white and 16% Black population. (7,8) If the types of obstacles that Hawkins faced in the 1950s, such as law school admission rates and funding, Florida Bar regulations, and law school accreditations, were assessed today, might we find that these obstructions still exist to thi day? What remedies have been implemented since then to dismember them? The numbers speak for themselves.


Works Cited



[The views expressed in this article are those of the author and the author alone; they do not necessarily represent the views of all members of the first RULR Editorial Board and Rutgers University.]


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