Virgil D. Hawkins – April 1949

Virgil D. Hawkins – April 1949. Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park. , Virgil D. Hawkins, who waged a 28-year battle to practice law in Florida and helped break the color barrier at the University of Florida Law School, died Thursday after a long illness. He was 81 years old. Mr. Hawkins, who was born in Okahumpka, near Leesburg, taught school and was a principal in Lake County schools in the 1940’s after graduating from Bethune-Cookman College. In 1949, at the age of 41, he applied for admission to the all-white law school at the University of Florida in Gainesville and was rejected because he was black. Mr. Hawkins challenged the state’s segregated school system. In 1956, the United States Supreme Court ruled that he should be admitted to the school. But the Florida Supreme Court invoked the doctrine of states’ rights to deny him admission. The state’s Board of Control then adopted rigid entrance requirements that made it impossible for Mr. Hawkins. , , In 1976 the Florida Bar urged the Florida Supreme Court to allow Mr. Hawkins to take the state bar examination even though he had attended an unaccredited law school in Massachusetts 20 years earlier. The bar said he should be given special consideration because of his ill treatment while he was trying to enter law school in 1949. In November 1976, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that Mr. Hawkins should be allowed to practice law and waived a requirement that he first take the bar exam. After a 28-year fight, Mr. Hawkins opened his law practice in a tiny office in Leesburg.