Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher
As we take time to honor Black History Month and the countless contributions of African American leaders in law, we must first give nod to Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher.
A native Oklahoman, Ms. Fisher was a leading activist, attorney and educator who fought to become the first African American student admitted to the Oklahoma University College of Law in 1949. Fisher’s landmark case opened higher education to African American students in the state of Oklahoma and helped pave the way for desegregation in the United States.
Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher was born February 8, 1924, in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Her parents had moved to Chickasha from Tulsa after surviving the 1921 Race Massacre.
In 1941, Fisher graduated from Chickasha’s Lincoln High School, where she earned honors as valedictorian of her graduating class.
While troubling, it is historically crucial to note that at this time, the Oklahoma Constitution defined “white” and “colored” and ordered the racial segregation of schools. Like many areas of our country at the time, Oklahoma was thoroughly segregated.
Fisher graduated from Langston University in 1945. At the time, Langston University was the only black college or university in the state of Oklahoma, and to this day, remains the only historically black college or university in the state. Langston, however, did not have a law school, so black Oklahomans had no option to attend law school in the state. With the support of the NAACP, Fisher agreed to seek admission to OU’s law school to challenge Oklahoma’s segregation laws.
On January 14, 1946, Fisher applied for admission to the OU College of Law. Accompanying her was the NAACP Regional Director, Dr. W.A.J. Bullock and Oklahoma’s NAACP leader and editor of the Black Dispatch, Roscoe Dunjee.
The three met with OU President, George Lynn Cross. After reviewing her transcript, President Cross said there was no academic reason to reject her application, but Oklahoma statutes prohibited “whites” and “blacks” from attending classes together. At this time, State law made it a misdemeanor to instruct or attend classes comprised of mixed races. The university would have faced been fined up to $500 a day, instructors up to $50 a day, and the white students who attended class with her would have been fined up to $20 a day.
President Cross was empathetic to Fisher and wrote a letter clearly stating that Fisher was well-qualified to enter OU’s law school, but cited state statutes as the basis for her rejection. Cross was well-aware this stance would provide fuel for a legal battle. Fisher found in President Cross an unexpected and welcome ally.
Years later, reflecting on Fisher’s initial rejection, President Cross would write, “I remember thinking it was just a damn shame that a person like that had to go through what she went through before she got what she was entitled to.”
From April 1946 to April 1947, Fisher and her team drafted and filed a writ of mandamus in Cleveland County District Court. The judge denies the writ and motion for a retrial, setting up an appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which upheld the district court’s ruling.
On September 24, 1947, Fisher’s attorneys, Amos Hall and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The court grants the petition for certiorari, and oral arguments are set for January.
In January 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court issues a per curium decision in Sipuel v. Board of Regents, stating that the state must provide Fisher with the same opportunities for a legal education as it provided to other citizens. The case was remanded to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Rather than admit Fisher to OU, the Attorney General orders the State Regents to create the Langston University School of Law, which was pieced together in five days and was set up in the State Capitol.
Fisher refused to accept this option and reapplied to OU. Once again, she is rejected.
On January 29, 1948, over 1,000 university students rallied on the North Oval in support of Fisher. At the protest they read, and then burned, a copy of the 14th Amendment.
Fisher’s lawyers file new suits in Cleveland County, contending that Langston’s law school did not afford the same opportunities as OU. The court ruled against her, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the finding, and Fisher’s lawyers announced their intent to again appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, a man by the name of George McLaurin had been fighting his own legal battle against OU. Fisher’s original lawsuit had paved the way for his to be successful. On October 13, 1948, McLaurin becomes the first African American to attend the University of Oklahoma.
On June 17, 1948, after seeing the potential for yet another heated Supreme Court battle, the university allowed Fisher to enroll, and on June 18, Fisher finally enters Monnet Hall as a law student. In that first summer session, she took contracts and torts.
While the moment Fisher had fought for had finally arrived, other barriers still existed. She had never before gone to school with white students, and most of them had little experience with African Americans. Fisher had to sit at the back of the class in a roped-off chair marked “colored.”
Fisher would one day write in her memoir, “Even on that first day, most of my fellow students made me feel right at home.” Within days, her classmates took down the rope, and in one classroom, the sign was thrown out the window.
In 1950, as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents that it was unconstitutional to require segregation in the classroom, Fisher joined her classmates in regular seating.
On August 6, 1951, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher graduated from the OU College of Law. As she walked across the stage during the ceremony at Owen Field, President Cross stood waiting to hand her the hard-earned and well-deserved diploma.
After graduating, Fisher sat for the Oklahoma bar exam and in 1952, she stood to take the oath as an attorney.
Fisher practiced law in Chickasha, earned a master’s degree in history from OU, joined the faculty of Langston University in 1957, and served as chair of the Department of Social Sciences. She retired in December of 1987 as Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs.
In May 1991, OU awarded Fisher an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, and in April 1992, Oklahoma Governor David Walters appointed Fisher to the OU Board of Regents, the very group that had once rejected her. Fisher was the second black woman to be appointed to the OU Board of Regents, following Sylvia Lewis’s appointment in 1986.
Fisher passed away on October 18, 1995, at the age of 71. In her honor, the University of Oklahoma dedicated the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Garden on the Norman campus. The garden’s fountain was made from rocks harvested from all 77 counties in Oklahoma.
At the bottom of the plaque commemorating Fisher's contributions, an inscription reads, “In Psalm 118, the psalmist speaks of how the stone that the builders once rejected becomes the cornerstone.”