The opening of Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958), the first direct state action challenge, not simply local school board tinkering, to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision, has, 

"As this case reaches us, it raises questions of the highest importance to the maintenance of our federal system of government. It necessarily involves a claim by the Governor and Legislature of a State that there is no duty on state officials to obey federal court orders resting on this Court's considered interpretation of the United States Constitution. Specifically, it involves actions by the Governor and Legislature of Arkansas upon the premise that they are not bound by our holding in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 . ", 

yet UF's College of Law over the years has irresponsibly misled the public, its students and cowardly professors (including its cowardly constitutional law professors) into believing that both the executive and judicial branches of our federal government allowed the Florida Supreme Court and the University of Florida to openly defy two direct U.S. Supreme Court orders, 347 U.S. 971 (1954) and 350 U.S. 413 (1956) , regarding a Jim Crow era school desegregation case, the Hawkins case which lasted from 1949-1958. Such defiance absolutely never happened nor quite obviously is such defiance in the intrinsic, not self-created or self-referential, historical record.

8:18 - 10:58

Dean Laura "Rosie D" Rosenbury (is she really a progressive law school dean or an upwardly mobile anti-Establishment fascist agent?) welcomes the audience to UF's intellectual community, passionately apologizes to the Hawkins family and others whom she claims suffered from racial injustice at UF, extends her sincere thanks to UF Law Professors Kenneth "Doofus Thug" Nunn and now recently retired Sharon Rush for founding UF's Center For The Study Of Race and Race Relations several decades ago, then introduces Harley Herman. Rosie D is quite the hostess and for those who have ever doubted her legal scholarship or camaraderie, feminist intuition, U.S. News and World Report "Twister" relevance or investiture with broad-based, equitable justice please read her babbling 14-page diuretic 2016 New England Law Review Volume 50, Number 3 article titled "Channeling Mary Joe Frug" and UF law students read especially about her "principled", student-humiliating feminist stand at "IV. Becoming a Dean" (Scribd website) or (scanned in PDF hardcopy). The New England School of Law is where Virgil D. Hawkins, her peer in fighting for justice and whose work Rosie D and her law school "aspire to continue" "every day we are here at UF Law", graduated from in 1964 although at the time it was not an accredited law school so Hawkins, who in 1986 plead nolo contendere to felony grand theft for stealing from a mentally incompetent legal client - his own nephew, could not sit for the Florida Bar exam, yet that didn't prevent fellow dimwits Rosie D, Doofus Thug, Sharon Rush, Harley Herman and others over the years from collectively recognizing, contributing to, promoting, defending and honoring Hawkins waiver then reinstatement into the Florida Bar, his "sacrifices" and civil rights legacy and his "for-the-people", "pro bono" law practice. In 2001 Hawkins was awarded an honorary law degree from UF despite being previously investigated then disciplined by the Florida Bar on more than one occasion, the final investigation and disciplinary action leading to his Florida Bar resignation pending an almost certain disbarment regarding the above cited felony grand theft charge and subsequent nolo contendere conviction (This acclaimed and heralded civil rights crusader entered a plea of nolo contendere? Either you did it or you didn't!!!) in Lake County, an incident which Hawkins never completed his restitution for and apparently never even contributed one penny to in lieu of his severe end-of-life destitution, thus he never should have been posthumously re-admitted to the Florida Bar nor awarded a posthumous law degree from UF.

12:46 - 13:12

Harley Herman is hopeful that a civil rights monument commemorating such "pioneers" as Virgil D. Hawkins will soon be erected on UF's campus.

13:48 - 14:08

Harley Herman makes a stunning admission that Hawkins did not have a college degree when he applied to UF's law school and that Hawkins did not get his first college degree until three years later. Herman then goes on to say that at that time you did not need a college degree to be admitted to UF's law school, so does that mean that anyone with a high school diploma was eligible for admission to UF's law school? Without a college degree applicants like Virgil D. Hawkins, both White and Black, were not academically eligible to be considered for admission to UF's law school. See the 1948-1950 UF law school requirements listed on the University of Central Florida's Digital Heritage Collection, a verified historical document, at,

UCF Digital Heritage 1948 on Pages 28-29 (84-85 of the document) and Pages 53-57 (109-113 of the document) 

and

UCF Digital Heritage 1948-1950 on Pages 188-191 (234-237 of the document).

(for full-screen navigation regardless of your magnification level, click on the downward-pointing black triangle just above the left and right arrows in the lower-right corner of the UCF Digital Heritage webpage)

Hawkins was admittedly not a military veteran nor had he ever completed three years of specific pre-law coursework at UF or FSU consequently he had to have a college degree to be eligible for admission to UF's law school when he made his one and only application, his 1949 application.

14:15 - 14:36

Harley Herman entirely misconstrues the Sweatt case within the context of the Hawkins case since Heman M. Sweatt provided ample comparative pre-Brown "separate but equal" Black vs. White law school facility evidence whereas Virgil D. Hawkins provided absolutely none (1952 Hawkins ruling - Read the third headnote, "Mandamus - Presumptions and Burden of Proof") even though the Florida Supreme Court prompted and had encouraged him to do so in their 1950 and 1951 Southern Reporter 2d published decisions neither of which, by the way, were final orders. Furthermore during Hawkins entire eight years of litigation before the Florida Supreme Court, 1949-1957, there was not one evidentiary hearing ever held consequently a post-Brown final order was never issued in the case, a case which Hawkins ultimately abandoned because time finally ran out on Hawkins when in June 1958 he was forced to admit during in-court federal trial court testimony (see Pages 25-27 where on the top of Page 27 the judge interjects himself as Hawkins and his attorney try to dodge the fact that Hawkins did not have a college degree until three years after he applied to UF's law school) that not only did he lie about having a college degree when he applied to UF's law school but that he had also never even submitted his college transcripts which six years earlier he had also tried to dodge by motioning the Florida Supreme Court to strike from the record, not simply deny as you would expect, a June 16, 1952 affidavit by W.F. Powers, the Executive Secretary of the Florida Board of Control, which swore under oath that,

"The petitioner refused to complete or return said form or to supply the data requested. At the same time, petitioner was requested to supply the usual transcript of his high[]school or college work, but he failed to do so."

Hawkins as the record from 1949-1984 plainly shows regularly lied and falsely swore by affidavit whenever it benefited him as further evidenced by both his inaugurating 1949 mandamus petition (see Paragraph 3 and last three pages) and his post-Brown 1954 mandamus petition (see Paragraph 3 and last two pages) where he falsely swore that he had a college degree from the HBCU Lincoln University in Pennsylvania when in fact, as Herman confirms at 14:04, Hawkins did not get his first college degree until 1952 and it was not from Lincoln University and there is no evidence whatsoever in the decades-old Hawkins narrative showing that the garrulous Hawkins, who always provided evidence and reminiscent memories whenever it benefited him, ever even went to Lincoln University.

14:41 - 15:08 

Here Harley Herman mocks the telegram that Hawkins received on September 19, 1951 saying Hawkins had been admitted to the FAMU law school even though he had never applied, 

"Those of you who are students, remember what you went through to apply to get into this law school? Well imagine if instead of having to go through that you just received a telegram like that in the mail saying, "Congratulations!", an application you had never filed had been accepted and here is the date, place and time to show up and enroll in your classes so you can start law school.",

thus even more ridiculously according to Herman's own sense of humor, Hawkins as the above June 16, 1952 affidavit plainly shows never submitted either his high school or college transcripts with his UF law school application, the law school he spent nine years trying to enter, yet he had the audacity to have the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court spend nine years reviewing and researching his case which they all had presumed was based upon an honest, complete and truthful application. Why does Herman, UF and FSU want us to honor Hawkins and denounce B.K. Roberts?

14:48 - 16:14

Herman's timeline and analysis of why the other petitioners dropped their cases can be readily disproven since at the time of the displayed September 19, 1951 Western Union telegram the other four petitioners were actively pursuing their pre-Brown mandamus claims just like Hawkins as evidenced by the following group of five separate Southern Reporter 2d mandamus rulings from August 1952, i.e. Virgil D. Hawkins , William T. Lewis , Oliver R. Maxey , Rose Boyd and Benjamin F. Finley had each filed separate state trial court cases thus they plainly did not bring a class action lawsuit only Hawkins' 1958 federal trial case was brought as a class action lawsuit with Hawkins as the only named plaintiff though he was not a party to the final order. Furthermore Harry T. Moore and his wife were murdered in December 1951 and January 1952, yet the parties to the Hawkins case were listed as "State of Florida ex rel. Virgil D. Hawkins, et al., Petitioners" as late as May 24, 1954 whereas Hawkins 1956 U.S. Supreme Court ruling does not include et al., Petitioners, only Hawkins, so Hawkins as late as May 1954 was not the sole litigant, yet Harley Herman claims all the other litigants dropped out soon after the Moore's house was bombed in 1951. The more plausible answer as to why the other four litigants had dropped out sometime after Brown is that their "Plessy v. Ferguson" equal protection standard mandamus petition which they originally brought in 1949 had become moot by the 1954 Brown decision with Hawkins the liar, fraud and con man deciding to hang on hoping to get admitted to UF's law school by some UF Registrar administrative oversight or falsely induced judicial presumption WHICH ALMOST HAPPENED!!!

16:44 - 18:10

Herman claims the Florida Supreme Court was allowed to disobey the U.S. Supreme Court in the Hawkins case amidst a general post-Brown environment of court defiance and Jim Crow hegemony thus Hawkins was forced to make the best of the situation and consequently chose to sacrifice his alleged opportunity to attend UF's law school in exchange for other Blacks being able to readily apply and be admitted such as George H. Starke, Jr., yet THIS HAWKINS "SACRIFICE" NEVER HAPPENED!!! Hawkins without a college degree was never qualified to even be considered as a bona fide applicant to UF's law school, so he had nothing to sacrifice consequently when this was revealed in June 1958 he was immediately and deliberately dropped by his NAACP LDF attorneys whom he and his second local attorney Horace Hill had fooled with their highly-propagandized, though pleadings-based, not evidence-based, Southern Reporter 2d published report issued by the Florida Supreme Court in its first ruling when the Court and Hawkins' first local attorney had no reason to suspect that Hawkins would turn out to be such a shameless liar and con man, 

"He possesses all the scholastic, moral and other qualifications, except as to race and color, prescribed by the laws of Florida and the rules and regulations of the State Board of Control for admission to the first year class of the College of Law of the University of Florida.", 47 So.2d 608 (1950), 609. 

Specifically Hawkins was dropped from the NAACP LDF class action lawsuit two days before the final order in the Hawkins-brought federal class action lawsuit was deliberated upon then rendered by Judge DeVane, see the June 17, 1958 Orlando Sentinel article titled, "DeVane Rules Today On Ban Of All Negroes", which is displayed in part at 8:06 of the YouTube PBS documentary on Virgil D. Hawkins (discussed on the next column of this webpage) and which entirely and irrefutably disproves the narrator's, former U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's, 8:06 sham propagandist voice-over claiming that Judge DeVane had given Hawkins an "ultimatum" that led to Hawkins' "sacrifice" as well as disproving the steady and solemn propagandist analysis from a much younger Harley Herman and George Allen on this matter, 8:06 - 9:45. 

17:20 – 18:15

Hawkins was never qualified either scholastically or morally to attend UF’s law school. Herman at 13:48-14:08 admitted Hawkins did not have a college degree when he applied and did not get one until three years later. Also Herman’s statements from 17:38-18:15 seem to be a reiteration from Hawkins’ federal in-court trial attorney Constance Baker Motley’s autobiography “Equal Justice Under Law”, a book which is well-known to Hawkins propagandists. On Page 117 of this book it has, 

"There was a serious legal difficulty with Judge DeVane’s order, which we and the state consciously overlooked. Ordinarily, in a class action case, if the plaintiff is not able to prevail, the class action fails, unless some other member intervenes and becomes the newly named plaintiff. There were no intervenors to be found. Hawkins graciously agreed to abandon the case when [Horace] Hill and [Robert] Carter explained that it was a victory for other blacks and that we could not proceed with his low score and no intervenors. … He had known from the beginning that he was simply a plaintiff in a test case that eventually would benefit other blacks.”

thus Motley's  autobiography, though historically inaccurate on other Hawkins matters, nevertheless does above provide even more evidence to refute today's claim that Hawkins exchanged his admission to UF's law school so that other Blacks could be admitted.

18:43 - 19:42 - In the University Press of Florida published book titled, "The Supreme Court Of Florida: A Journey Toward Justice, 1972-1987", by Neil Skene, former president and publisher of Congressional Quarterly, Inc., it chronicles the events and circumstances of the Florida Supreme Court's deliberations regarding Virgil D. Hawkins admission to the Florida Bar in 1976-1977.  Skene's book quotes from Harley Herman's Florida Coastal Law Journal article "Anatomy of A Bar Resignation" which Herman also recites from at 19:22 when he quotes Justice England although it sounds like Herman calls him "Justice English". Specifically on Page 440 of Skene's book it quotes verbatim from Herman's article which Herman peculiarly and rather unnecessarily abridges during his 19:22 recitation; here is the correct and unabridged Justice England quote,

"We are left, then, in the difficult position of having before us an injustice of our own making, having the exclusive power to rectify it, having no prescribed method or precedent to do so, and having a competing public concern which militates against individual relief."

Harley Herman at 18:49 also mentions Florida Supreme Court Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first African-American justice on the Florida Supreme Court, and Skene's book on Page 440 lists several quotes from Justice Hatchett regarding the Florida Supreme Court's 1955 and 1957 rulings in the Hawkins case both written by Florida Supreme Court Justice B. K. Roberts. One of the Page 440 Justice Hatchett quotes falsely accuses B. K. Roberts and the Florida Supreme Court of disobeying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, "implausible and insufficient reasons for the majority's illegal refusal to follow the mandate of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Finally to note in this context Skene on Page 441 also provides the reader with the parenthetical, "(Hatchett declined to discuss the Hawkins case; all the other participants in that conference have died.)", yet as is well-known Justice Hatchett has discussed the case with others, perhaps less critical and incisive than Skene, in the past with such information eventually being published.

*** Read the preceding column first since it contains most of the historical documents also referenced here. ***

0:48 - 0:58  Virgil D. Hawkins was never qualified, either academically or morally, to attend UF's law school. The infamous,

"He possesses all the scholastic, moral and other qualifications, except as to race and color, prescribed by the laws of Florida and the rules and regulations of the State Board of Control for admission to the first year class of the College of Law of the University of Florida.", 47 So.2d 608 (1950), 609, 

was based entirely upon the pleadings since, unlike the Sweatt v. Painter case, there was never a single evidentiary hearing during the entirety of Hawkins state case, 1949-1957. Furthermore there was never a post-Brown final order in Hawkins' state case since he voluntarily abandoned it once he was proven to be such a shameless liar during his 1958 federal trial court case which was tried on the merits.

0:58 - 1:30 Notice in the video at 1:02 that the Sweatt v. Painter rehearing was denied on October 9, 1950 and that Hawkins' first order, the above 47 So.2d 608 (1950), was issued on August 1, 1950, thus the Sweatt case was still not fully settled when the first Hawkins order came out and consequently it could not be "In defiance of the clear precedent based on Sweatt v. Painter ...". Secondly, and more importantly, there was extensive evidence presented by Sweatt to the Texas state appellate court regarding the Faculty, Curriculum, Classroom, Library and Physical Facilities at the new Black law school,  210 S.W.2d 442 (Tex. Civ. App. 1948), 448, whereas in the Hawkins case no such evidence whatsoever was presented to the court despite (see the first column on this webpage for court document proof) Justice Sebring pleading and waiting for two years, 1950-1952, for Hawkins to present such evidence so the Florida Supreme Court could determine whether FAMU's new law school was separate but equal or separate but unequal when compared to UF's established law school for White students.

6:06 - 6:34  Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander J. Shaw, "But the law was not so different than it is today and there is no way to escape the fact that it was an outright defiance of the United States Supreme Court that said that you shall admit Virgil Hawkins. This court, one of the few courts that I've ever heard of in this nation, said, "We are not going to do it. We are going to find as many ways to keep him out as you can find to try to put him in."" Yet Justice Shaw is 100% wrong here as illustrated in the next video segment, 6:36 - 7:05, and elsewhere throughout this website.

6:36 - 7:05  The narrator, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, herself an attorney who was a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, apparently never saw the video nor ever bothered to read the less than one-page 1956 U.S. Supreme Court Hawkins order which she leads the viewer to believe she is quoting from sentence-complete verbatim even though on the video there is no syntactic/grammatical period at the end of 6:36's,

"As this case involved [involves] the admission of a Negro to a graduate professional school, there is no reason for delay.  He is entitled to prompt admission",

whereas the unedited, correct and complete U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 350 U.S. 413 (1956) at 414, has, 

"As this case involves the admission of a Negro to a graduate professional school, there is no reason for delay.  He is entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates. ", 

and as is becoming well known today Hawkins was never a "qualified candidate" either academically or morally.

Furthermore the Lawyers Edition of this 350 U.S. 413 (1956) report  at 413 of the report, the most commonly found U.S. Supreme Court case law edition in a law library, irrefutably shows Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter had argued for Hawkins' immediate admission to UF's law school, 

"Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall, both of New York City, Horace Hill, of Daytona Beach, Florida, and Elwood H. Chisolm and William L. Taylor, filed a brief for petitioner:

Petitioner is entitled to an order requiring his immediate admission to the University of Florida law school."

which the U. S. Supreme Court plainly and flatly denied with its,

"As this case involves the admission of a Negro to a graduate professional school, there is no reason for delay.  He is entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates. ", 

and as time and evidence would eventually show Hawkins was never qualified, either morally or academically.

 7:56 - 8:02  The Florida Supreme Court never "overruled" or defied the U.S. Supreme Court since the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed every Florida Supreme Court decision in the Hawkins case - 342 US 877 (1951) , 347 US 971 (1954),  350 US 413 (1956) and  355 US 839 (1957) - and they never even suggested any defiance.

8:20 - 8:52 - I have the entire June 16-17, 1958 in-court testimony from not only Virgil D. Hawkins but from every one else who gave testimony over those two days and it was on June 16 the first day of testimony that Hawkins was forced to admit that he had lied about having a college degree when he applied to UF's law school and that he did not get his first college degree until three years later. This was no surprise to the Florida Supreme Court because they knew six years earlier that Hawkins had lied about having a college degree as evidenced by a sequence of out-of-the-blue affidavits that were filed with the Florida Supreme Court during June 1952, the event probably being triggered by a tip that Hawkins was about to receive a college degree from Bethune-Cookman College. Furthermore the final court order in the Hawkins case, from his federal case not his state case which he abandoned a year earlier in 1957 as the Florida Supreme Court was closing in on him (see Justice Sebring's 1955 concurring in part/dissenting in part opinion), the only trial court order that Hawkins and his attorneys - including Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and Robert Carter - never appealed, explicitly stated that Hawkins and his attorneys had provided evidence to the court regarding his qualifications and that he had utterly failed to demonstrate that he was qualified for admission, 

"When it comes to the relief that should be granted, the Court finds and holds upon the evidence submitted with reference to plaintiff's right to enter the University of Florida Law School that plaintiff failed completely to establish any such right under the law applicable to cases of this character and he will be denied the right to enter the Law School.", Hawkins v. Board of Control of Florida, 162 F. Supp. 851 (N.D. Fla. 1958), 853.

so how did the rumor get started that Hawkins was not allowed to present evidence to the Court or that Hawkins had decided not to provide any evidence because that would only have lead to years of appellate litigation. If Hawkins was qualified, do you think that Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and Robert Carter would have just walked away from the case and not appealed? Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and Robert Carter walked away when they realized that Hawkins had fooled them with his alleged 1930's Lincoln University college degree. Thurgood Marshall had graduated from Lincoln University in the 1930's so maybe he questioned Hawkins about facts - campus life, popular instructors and hangouts, sporting events, etc ... - any Lincoln University graduate or attendee would know and discovered that Hawkins was a complete fraud 

At 8:35 Harley Herman claims that it could take 3-4 years for the courts to determine if someone is qualified for law school. How long does it currently take for either UF's or FSU's law school to determine if someone is qualified to be admitted to their law school? How long would it take if the applicant did not even meet the basic requirements for a discretionary review, i.e. Hawkins as even admitted by Herman (see previous column on this webpage) did not have a college degree when he applied to UF's law school which was a requirement for non-military veterans and by Hawkins own testimony it shows he had never served in the military and furthermore his being in the military is nowhere mentioned in the decades-old Hawkins narrative. The other exception for admittance was for those students who had three years or more of specific completed coursework at UF or FSU, universities that Hawkins quite obviously had never attended.

Here are some documents from the historical record proving that Hawkins was never qualified to be admitted to UF's law school - the June 16-17, 1958 testimony itself with the University of Florida's consequent in-court Motion To Dismiss immediately filed in-court after Hawkins' admitted that he had lied about having a college degree when he applied to UF's law school, the requirements for admission to UF's law school when Hawkins applied (see previous column on this webpage), the June 17-19, 1958 Orlando Sentinel articles which are easily verified on www.newspapers.com, a sequence of motions and affidavits filed with the Florida Supreme Court in June 1952 and finally Hawkins' final court ruling, federal Judge Dozier Devane's, ruling of June 18, 1958 which was never appealed,  Hawkins v. Board of Control of Florida, 162 F. Supp. 851 (N.D. Fla. 1958). UF's and FSU's Virgil D. Hawkins narrative is a 100% HEARSAY and OTHERWISE, ET CETERA HOAX.

8:06 - 9:46  The newspaper excerpt at 8:06 clearly contradicts the voice-over from Congresswoman Barbara Jordan as well as the analysis of chief Hawkins crusader Harley Herman since if you pause the video (this 1989 pre-Internet documentary was designed for uninterruptible TV stream viewing not YouTube pauses and rewinds so whoever created this segment of the video irrefutably and deliberately meant to fool the viewer with Jordan's voice-over) you will read from the excerpt and the other Orlando Sentinel articles that Hawkins bowed out of the case under imminent threat of being forced out by his attorneys. This bowing out occurred two days before federal trial court Judge Dozier Devane issued his final, unappealed order desegregating the University of Florida thus Hawkins "sacrifice" never happened with the Hawkins case becoming nothing more than a simple reiteration of the Brown decision with Hawkins not even being a final party to the case he originally brought. Hawkins was never a party to the final class action order!!! Here is the complete YouTube at 8:06 "DeVane Rules Today On Ban Of All Negroes" article from the series of articles by the Orlando Sentinel, June 17-19, 1958 which covered this final court episode in Hawkins' nine-year quest to be admitted to UF's law school. Also why is it that this documentary video does not generally provide the newspaper publisher or date of publication for its articles? (Through great troubles and random searches I eventually found the 8:06 article on microfilm in a public library.) Probably so no one could look them up and read their entirety. Furthermore the 9:19 momentarily displayed Ebony magazine article, for those who have read it not just the magazine cover, similarly refutes what is in UF's Virgil D. Hawkins Story in addition to a studied analysis of this PBS video documentary which unfortunately not only bamboozled the Florida Supreme Court on May 25, 1999 but has been broadcast around the country and distributed to every law school in the country.

This FAKE NEWS, propagandist and historically false 1989 PBS video documentary was not only broadcast to the general public and sent to every law school library in the country it was also shown on May 25, 1999 during an in-court Virgil D. Hawkins commemorative ceremony hosted by the Florida Supreme Court where it received an astounding ovation and whose analysis FSU President John Thrasher is currently relying upon in his decision to motion the Florida Legislature to rename B.K. Roberts Hall.

Click here to see the entire 1999 Florida Supreme Court ceremony on WSFU's Gavel to Gavel website.

15:25 - 15:56  An entirely false summary and closing.