Virgil Darnell Hawkins

Virgil Darnell Hawkins (November 28, 1906 – February 11, 1988) was an African-American educator and Florida attorney who spent several decades of his life fighting for admission to practice law in Florida after having initially been denied admission to the University of Florida School of Law on the basis of his race.

Early life Hawkins was born in Lake County, Florida to Virgil William Hawkins and Josephine Arbelle Hawkins (née Brown), as one of eight children. The family lived in a wood-frame on a ten-acre homestead near Okahumpka, Florida, purchased in 1895. The farm offered the family a way of supporting themselves, and both parents worked supplemental jobs for additional income. While living on the farm, the senior Hawkins ran a store and worked picking oranges, while Josephine cleaned and ironed clothing.

Hawkins' maternal grandfather was Alfred Brown Osgood, a prominent African Methodist Episcopal Church minister and American legislator. Upon finding out that his son wanted to be a lawyer, his father told him he was going to hell for lying.

As a teenager in the mid-1920s, Hawkins attended the AME-operated Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. At the time, his home town in Lake County had no public schooling past tenth grade, so Hawkins made the 200 mile journey away from home to achieve his goal of becoming a lawyer. in Daytona Beach, Florida, which he was able to attend at the age of 37. He later served as Bethune–Cookman's director of public relations beginning in 1949.

Hawkins made his way back to Florida and married Ida Frazier, a schoolteacher, in the 1930s. Following in his wife's footsteps, Hawkins began teaching at Edgewood, a segregated elementary school in Groveland, Florida.

University of Florida Lawsuits In 1949, Horace Hill, an NAACP lawyer in Daytona Beach, Florida sought to challenge existing discriminatory practices in education within the state of Florida. At that time, Florida would only provide scholarship to Black students to out of state schools. This was in light of the ruling of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, which ruled that states must either provide Blacks with their own school or allow them to attend school with whites. In seeking a plaintiff to challenge a Florida school, Hill found Virgil Hawkins. thumb leftIn 1956, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Florida ex Rel. Hawkins v. Board of Control, that Hawkins was "entitled to prompt admission [to the University of Florida Law School] under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates." However, Florida Governor LeRoy Collins "vowed to resist the order through every lawful means", In 1958, Hawkins withdrew his application to the University of Florida College of Law in exchange for a Florida Supreme court order desegregating the University of Florida's graduate and professional schools. Hawkins attended law school in Boston but was denied permission to take the Florida Bar exam because the law school was unaccredited. Gilbert King (author) features Virgil Hawkins in his book "Beneath a Ruthless Sun".