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Creation Date
1935
Description
Murray v. Pearson was a Maryland Court of Appeals decision which found "the state has undertaken the function of education in the law, but has omitted students of one race from the only adequate provision made fro it, and omitted them solely because of their color." On January 15, 1936, the court affirmed the lower court ruling which ordered the university to immediately integrate its student population.
Significance: The decision of the Court of Appeals was never taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, and as such the ruling was not binding outside of Maryland; the Supreme Court addressed the same issue in 1938 in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada. The NAACP's legal strategy of attacking segregation by demanding equal access to public facilities that could not be easily duplicated was followed in later lawsuits with mixed results
