The Florida Bar

Harley Scott Herman, an attorney, files this petition which seeks posthumously to reinstate Virgil Darnell Hawkins to The Florida Bar. We have jurisdiction under article V, section 15, Florida Constitution.

In 1949, Virgil Hawkins, a forty-one-year-old black man, was denied admission to the University of Florida Law School because of his race. He filed suit, but the Florida Supreme Court refused to admit him on the premise that a “separate but equal” law school was in the process of being established at Florida Agricultural *670and Mechanical University to accommodate Hawkins and other black law…