UVA Desegregated 75 Years Ago Today

Seventy-five years ago today, Gregory Swanson desegregated the University of Virginia. Mr. Swanson, who sued in the Western District of Virginia for admission to the University of Virginia School of Law, enrolled on September 15th, 1950 as an LL.M. student. At the age of twenty-six, Mr. Swanson simultaneously desegregated the Law School and the University of Virginia.

Mr. Swanson’s court case and matriculation were recently commemorated with a September 5th, 2025 community event and a walking tour led by University of Virginia Black Law Students Association (BLSA) students the following day. The community event featured six speakers: Law School Dean Leslie Kendrick, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan, BLSA President Derek Collins, NAACP Albemarle-Charlottesville Branch President Lynn Boyd, Western District of Virginia Judge Jasmine Yoon, and Ms. Camille Swanson, daughter of Mr. Swanson. The commemoration was the product of months of planning by the Swanson Legacy Committee, as well as the Law School Library, the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, the Albemarle Historical Society, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the NAACP, and community members, and took place in the Swanson Courtroom. The Courtroom, now a public meeting room on the second floor of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library in downtown Charlottesville, is, in the words of Judge Jasmine Yoon, a “symbol of progress.” What was once part of the battleground for desegregation is now an inclusive community gathering place.

BLSA President Derek Collins speaks at commemoration. Source: Jesús Pino Aguilar

At the time of Mr. Swanson’s court-ordered admission, Virginia did not have so-called “separate but equal” graduate institutions. The Commonwealth’s practice was to cover tuition for students of color to attend out-of-state programs. The absence of these in-state programs had led civil rights litigators to target graduate programs as an inroad to broader desegregation. Mr. Swanson, already an attorney at the firm Hill, Martin, & Robinson at the time of his lawsuit, felt that his firm might be willing to bring his case. He noted in a letter to Dr. George Marion Johnson, Dean of Howard University (Mr. Swanson’s alma mater), that his firm was “waging a fight against segregation in these parts.”

Mr. Swanson’s application to the Law School was approved unanimously by the Law School’s faculty. The famed Mortimer Caplin was reportedly a champion of Mr. Swanson’s, eventually hiring him at the Internal Revenue Service, where Mr. Swanson spent the majority of his career. It was the Board of Visitors which frustrated Mr. Swanson’s admission, precipitating Swanson v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia. The NAACP, along with Mr. Swanson’s firm, took up the case. Counsel of record included Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, Dean Johnson, and Mr. Swanson himself.

Mr. Swanson’s legal victory was momentous. His case went down in history as one of the stepping-stones to Brown v. Board of Education that, like Sweatt v. Painter, wedged open the door to broader desegregation of the South’s public education systems. But until about ten years ago, much of the UVA community had forgotten Mr. Swanson’s story. Mr. Swanson’s nephew, Evans Hopkins, remarked that Mr. Swanson’s “story fits in with the suppression and loss of Black History.” Congresswoman McClellan reminded the audience at the commemoration that stories like Mr. Swanson’s tend to be passed down in communities and families, not in schools. Mr. Swanson’s history was never fully lost—his immediate family preserved his story and his effects, donating some of his papers in recent years to the Law School Library. But it was not until the 2010s that the Law School re-learned Mr. Swanson’s story and made a concerted effort to pull its weight in sharing his impact on the University.

Howard University has maintained a collection of Mr. Swanson’s papers. Western District of Virginia Judge John Paul, who sat on the three-judge panel which decided Mr. Swanson’s case, also maintained papers related to Mr. Swanson. The Library of Congress has preserved photographs of Mr. Swanson as well. Despite the best efforts of these and other parties, there is one gaping hole in public records of Mr. Swanson’s life: access to his case. As part of my research for this article, I searched for Swanson v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia on Lexis, on Westlaw, even on Bloomberg. I could not find it. I found one citation to the case in an amicus brief submitted by the NAACP LDF in Students for Fair Admissions. Curious about where the LDF had found the case, I dug a little deeper: they cited the Judicial Papers of Judge John Paul—the aforementioned collection. It is concerning enough that the fuller story of Mr. Swanson’s life and impact fell into relative obscurity for so long, but the idea that his case is so difficult to draw upon and cite nowadays is altogether another concern in itself. The LDF’s citation of the case in SFFA is all too apt: in this time when, as Congresswoman McClellan put it, Mr. Swanson’s legacy is “under assault,” how can his case be so inaccessible? What other cases like his languish in archives, remote from the databases that nourish the modern litigator?

When Mr. Swanson’s story was reported, it was often underreported. In his speech at the commemoration, Mr. Collins commented on a laughably understated Time Magazine caption of a photograph of Mr. Swanson: “he went to court.” Even closer to home, I came across a September 1950 Law Weekly announcement entitled, “192 Law Students Register For The First Year Class.” The article contains a list of all five LL.M. students who enrolled, including “Gregory H. Swanson, who is the first negro to enroll in the University of Virginia.” That is all the article says on the matter. A later article by the Dean of the Law School was equally laconic in its almost offhanded single-sentence mention of Mr. Swanson. Neither article even hints at Mr. Swanson’s lawsuit, let alone his unique role as plaintiff and counsel in his case or the magnitude of the University’s desegregation.

Mr. Collins went on to reflect that Mr. Swanson was, by all accounts, modest and not desirous of fame. In a letter to Dean Johnson, Mr. Swanson’s circumspection and quiet determination shone through:

So far, no Negro here in the State of Virginia has attempted to matriculate at the University of Virginia Law School. It might be well that someone attempt to do so now. I had thought in terms of waiting for my brother, who is attending Virginia State College, to apply for entrance there in that it might be a better case, but that is about another year away.

Mr. Swanson was part of the “same lineage of courageous fighters that shaped [Mr. Collins’] own community” in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. But Mr. Swanson situated himself within that lineage not only because of his court case, but because of who he was day in and day out. While he was at the Law School, Mr. Swanson helped found a student group dedicated to “promoting interracial understanding and good will.” When a Roman Catholic priest wrote to him from France congratulating him on his case and asking him for his explanation of racism in the United States, Mr. Swanson responded with a multi-page analysis of American history, his own experience, and reading recommendations for the priest. When our own Law Weekly published an editorial questioning the value of faster-paced civil rights reform, Mr. Swanson wrote the Law Weekly critiquing the article and also sent the article, along with his response, to the Roanoke Tribune. At the recent commemoration, Camille Swanson, one of Mr. Swanson’s daughters, shared how he instilled manners and morals in his children, describing him as “thoughtful,” “humble,” “truly engaged,” and “a dear husband”—“he wanted us to experience what he didn’t experience growing up.”

Ms. Camille Swanson speaks at commemoration. Source: Jesús Pino Aguilar

Mr. Swanson’s story will continue to be told. Mr. Hopkins and the Swanson Legacy Committee are in the process of developing a nonprofit with the goal of telling Mr. Swanson’s story and working toward civic engagement and education for young people. Today, the Law School is also unveiling an exhibit, curated by Law Library staff along with Mr. Collins, centering on Mr. Swanson’s life and story. Addie Patrick, a curatorial specialist who worked on the exhibit, commented on the value of collaboration in bringing new light to a story. Although the Library has now spent years researching Mr. Swanson’s story, the commemoration spurred synthesis and collaboration that deepened the Law School team’s understanding of Mr. Swanson’s story. As Ms. Swanson commented toward the end of her commemoration speech, “this is a living thing now.” “People of color have so much to contribute. They just need the opportunity.”

This article was first published on the Virginia Law Weekly website, on Monday, September 15, 2025.