page_title: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher
section_title: Legal education
hierarchical_section_title: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher / Legal education
caption_attribution_description: A view of the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Garden on the campus of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK.
context_page_description: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher 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. She was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma and was the daughter of a minister, Rev. Travis B. Sipuel, and his wife, the former Martha Belle Smith.
context_section_description: In order to comply, the state of Oklahoma created the Langston University School of Law, located at the state capital. Further litigation was necessary to prove that this law school was inferior to the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Finally, on June 18, 1949, Sipuel was the first African-American admitted to the University of Oklahoma's law school. becoming the first African-American woman to attend a previously segregated, all-white public law school in Oklahoma. By this time, she was married and pregnant with the first of her two children. 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.
   
  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.
caption: The Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Garden located on the north part of the main campus in honor of the first African-American to be admitted to the OU College of Law in 1948.
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