Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher

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Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher
Born
Ada Lois Sipuel

February 8, 1924
DiedOctober 18, 1995(1995-10-18) (aged 71)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
Alma materLangston University
University of Oklahoma
OccupationLawyer
Known forKey figure in the Oklahoma civil rights movement
SpouseWarren Fisher (m. 1944)

Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (February 8, 1924 – October 18, 1995) was a key figure in the

Civil Rights Movement in Oklahoma. She applied for admission into the University of Oklahoma law school in order to challenge the state's segregation laws and to become a lawyer.[1]

Early life

Fisher was born six years before the lynching of

Henry Argo in Chickasha, Oklahoma,[2] to Rev. Travis Bruce Sipuel (1877–1946) and Martha Belle Smith (maiden; 1885–1971).[3] She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1941 as valedictorian.[1] She enrolled in the Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College (now University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), but transferred to Langston University in 1942. Ada Lois Sipuel, on March 2, 1944, in Chickasha, married Warren Washington Fisher (1916–1987). On May 21, 1945, she graduated from Langston, with honors.[1]

Supreme Court case

Her brother, Lemuel Travis Sipuel (1921–1961), had planned to challenge segregationist policies of the

Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., to not delay his career further by protracted litigation.[4]

Fisher, however, was willing to delay her legal career in order to challenge

Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. that the state of Oklahoma must provide instruction for blacks equal to that of whites. Thurgood Marshall acted as the head NAACP lawyer for this case and the justices ruled unanimously.[5] The case was also a precursor for Brown v. Board of Education
.

Legal education

In order to comply, the state of Oklahoma created the

pregnant with the first of her two children.[8]
The law school gave her a chair marked "colored," and roped it off from the rest of the class. Despite this, her classmates and teachers welcomed her, shared their notes and studied with her, helping her to catch up on the materials she had missed.

African-American
to be admitted to the OU College of Law in 1948.

Sipuel had to dine in a separate chained-off guarded area of the law school cafeteria. She recalled that years later some white students would crawl under the chain and eat with her when the guards were not around. Her lawsuit and tuition were supported by hundreds of small donations, and she believed she owed it to those donors to make it.

Later career

She graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Laws[9][10] degree and began practicing law in her hometown of Chickasha in 1952.

In 1992, Oklahoma governor David Walters appointed her to the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, which she noted in an interview, "completes a forty-five-year cycle." She further stated, "Having suffered severely from bigotry and racial discrimination as a student, I am sensitive to that kind of thing," and she planned to bring a new dimension to university policies.

Before her death in 1995, Fisher was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and also was a professor at Langston University. She died of cancer, in Oklahoma City in October 1995.[11]

In 1996 she was inducted posthumously in the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame. The University of Oklahoma dedicated the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Garden in her honor.

Family

Ada Lois Sipuel, on March 2, 1944, in

Pentecostal).[12] Sipuel rented a house in the Greenwood District on North Greenwood and leased a building for the North Greenwood COGIC. The building was located at 700 N. Greenwood (presently OSU Tulsa), on the North end of the thriving Black Wall Street. Sipuel helped grow the congregation to 40 during his time there.[2][13]

See also

Bibliography

Notes

References

  • .
Chapter 3: "Separate But Equal". University of Oklahoma Press. 1996. pp. 43–86. .
  • TimesMachine
    ).

External links