Seventy-five years ago today, Gregory Swanson desegregated the University of Virginia. Mr. Swanson, who sued in the Western District of Virginia for admission to the University of Virginia School of Law, enrolled on September 15th, 1950 as an LL.M. student. At the age of twenty-six, Mr. Swanson simultaneously desegregated the Law School and the University of Virginia.
Mr. Swanson’s court case and matriculation were recently commemorated with a September 5th, 2025 community event and a walking tour led by University of Virginia Black Law Students Association (BLSA) students the following day. The community event featured six speakers: Law School Dean Leslie Kendrick, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan, BLSA President Derek Collins, NAACP Albemarle-Charlottesville Branch President Lynn Boyd, Western District of Virginia Judge Jasmine Yoon, and Ms. Camille Swanson, daughter of Mr. Swanson. The commemoration was the product of months of planning by the Swanson Legacy Committee, as well as the Law School Library, the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, the Albemarle Historical Society, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the NAACP, and community members, and took place in the Swanson Courtroom. The Courtroom, now a public meeting room on the second floor of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library in downtown Charlottesville, is, in the words of Judge Jasmine Yoon, a “symbol of progress.” What was once part of the battleground for desegregation is now an inclusive community gathering place.
At the time of Mr. Swanson’s court-ordered admission, Virginia did not have so-called “separate but equal” graduate institutions. The Commonwealth’s practice was to cover tuition for students of color to attend out-of-state programs. The absence of these in-state programs had led civil rights litigators to target graduate programs as an inroad to broader desegregation. Mr. Swanson, already an attorney at the firm Hill, Martin, & Robinson at the time of his lawsuit, felt that his firm might be willing to bring his case. He noted in a letter to Dr. George Marion Johnson, Dean of Howard University (Mr. Swanson’s alma mater), that his firm was “waging a fight against segregation in these parts.”
Mr. Swanson’s application to the Law School was approved unanimously by the Law School’s faculty. The famed Mortimer Caplin was reportedly a champion of Mr. Swanson’s, eventually hiring him at the Internal Revenue Service, where Mr. Swanson spent the majority of his career. It was the Board of Visitors which frustrated Mr. Swanson’s admission, precipitating Swanson v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia. The NAACP, along with Mr. Swanson’s firm, took up the case. Counsel of record included Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, Dean Johnson, and Mr. Swanson himself…