Texas Southern University is a public, state-supported institution of higher learning in Houston. The school was founded in 1947 as Texas State University for Negroes. It occupies the land of the former Houston College for Negroes. The university adopted its present name in 1951. Well-known graduates of Texas Southern University include Barbara C. Jordan, the first African American woman from the South to serve in the United States Congress, and U.S. Congressmen George Leland and Craig Washington.
Students can earn law degrees from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. The law school was founded in 1947 due to a lawsuit by Herman M. Sweatt, an African American postal worker. Sweatt was denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law because he was black. As a result of Sweatt’s suit, the state of Texas created a separate law school for blacks at Texas State University. In 1976, the school was named in honor of Thurgood Marshall, an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. As a lawyer, Marshall had argued Sweatt’s case before the Supreme Court.
The university’s website at https://www.tsu.edu/ offers additional information.
