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Racial Terror & The Attempt To Stop The Desegregation Of Lamar State College Of Technology, Amilcar Shabazz

Amilcar Shabazz

The desegregation of Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont was marked by racial terror. The clash at Lamar climaxed a protracted antidiscrimination campaign that developed during the Second World War, escalated in 1949 when Lamar grew from a locally supported junior college to a state-supported senior college, and turned into a court battle in the wake of the victorious 1950 Supreme Court decision in Sweatt v. Painter which opened certain graduate and professional school programs at the University of Texas to African Americans. While in the book Advancing Democracy my focus is on documenting Lamar’s desegregation and situating the …