She was told she would never graduate law school in 1966. She went on to make history
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Arleas Upton Kea remembers meeting Judge Harriet Mitchell Murphy for the first time sometime in 1977. She and a group of students at the University of Texas had dreams of going to law school.
They had the idea to start a pre-law association. Upton Kea remembers sitting with the group, deliberating on who they would ask to be their advisor when everyone had the same thought at once.
“We all simultaneously said ‘Judge Harriet Murphy,’” Upton Kea said.
When Murphy came into the student center to meet her group, Upton Kea said she radiated joy and excitement. Murphy wanted to know all about them. She peppered them with questions: What will you do with the degree? Why do you want to pursue law?
She told them about herself, too. Murphy grew up in Atlanta and went to school with Martin Luther King Jr., whom she called M.L. She also talked about her meeting with Thurgood Marshall and her work as an activist. Then, she talked about her experience at UT Law more than a decade before.
“She told us that there were some who actually told her, you will never graduate from law school, and you will never pass the bar,” Upton Kea said.
Murphy was a 37-year-old widow when she enrolled at UT’s law school. The school was integrated 15 years before when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered it to allow Heman Sweatt to enroll. But Murphy was still the only Black student in her class when she started classes in 1966. She was the only Black student in the law school for a brief period.
A handful of Black students graduated in the 15 years between the Supreme Court case, Sweatt v Painter, and Murphy’s enrollment. Sweatt’s legal win opened doors for Black UT Law hopefuls and influenced the later Brown v. Board of Education ruling, but he grew too sick to graduate himself.
Murphy met a new love and was teaching at Huston-Tillotson University while earning her law degree. She also worked diligently to bring more Black students to the law school. In her memoir, “There All the Honor Lies,” she describes working to recruit Black students at Prairie View University and Jarvis Christian College.
“We netted 12 or 13 student recruits for the fall of 1968,” Murphy wrote in her book.
And in 1969, with at least one other Black student enrolled at the law school, Murphy graduated and passed the bar – shattering the doubt cast on her years earlier. Four years later, she made history as the first Black woman in Texas to be appointed a permanent judgeship.
She served for nearly 20 years on Austin’s Municipal Court.
“Harriet just never met an obstacle or a problem that could not be resolved, and she did that in a very, very positive way,” Upton Kea said.
Upton Kea gained a lifelong friend and mentor during that meeting in the student center 50 years earlier. Upton Kea also graduated from UT Law School in 1982. She was the first Black president of the law school’s Alumni Association and is a trustee for The University of Texas Law School Foundation.
Her portrait hangs just around the corner from Murphy’s at the law school she dreamed of attending as an undergraduate. After Judge Murphy passed away in late January, Upton Kea spoke at her funeral about the last conversation with her mentor.
“I had come to her home from a scholarship award luncheon,” Upton Kea said. “She wanted to know: who are the students? It reminded me of the questions she asked when she met with me and other pre-law students almost 50 years ago.”
“I think one of her biggest concerns was that she not be the last and that door be permanently opened for other people like her,” Upton Kea said.
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