The Margold Report was based on the strategy of actually attacking the inequality of schools at the elementary and high school level, to demonstrate that while states had discretion to spend their money, they always spent it in a way that the black schools were funded less than the white schools. Consequently, since the law was always applied this way, the law was unconstitutional. Well, when we started the campaign that was the idea but then it became apparent that you didn't have to prove the inequality or persistent inequality at the graduate and professional school level, because there was not a single place in the south where a black could get a Ph.D., not a single accredited law school for blacks in the South.

There was one accredited medical school for blacks in the south, and then there was Howard University, that was it. So we thought we might attack first at the graduate and professional level, and the reason for that was, first of all, you didn't have to prove any inequality, you didn't have to add things up, there was zero there. Another thing was, those cases didn't present a contentious social challenge. One of the reasons that lots of people in the south wanted to maintain social segregation was that they were horrified at the possibility of black men and white women going to school together, which of course would happen if high schools and elementary schools desegregated. But not many women went to graduate school and professional school in those days, so there was not much likelihood of something like that happening. So the first cases were brought against law schools, and the case of a graduate school in education at the University of Oklahoma, and those cases were won on the grounds that there was either no education for blacks in that discipline or, if there was, it was so unequal it was like the difference between Delaware State College and the University of Delaware (Parker v. University of Delaware).

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