Understanding Sweatt’s personal life, the research points to Lavergne’s book that provides an extensive history of Sweatt’s family. His father, James Leonard Sweatt, “valued and insisted on scholastic excellence in their children.” The result of his insistence, all five adult children would earn advanced degrees; Heman would graduate from Wiley College in Marshall, in Texas. He majored in biology; after graduation, he worked as a porter, grade school teacher, acting school principal, and later as a postal carrier. Throughout his life, he was influenced by his father and his involvement with the NAACP. Leonard’s friends included Lulu White, her husband Julius and Carter W. Wesley, who sometimes allowed Heman to write several columns…show more content… His experience with attorney Francis Scott Key Whittaker, while trying to change postal regulations and policies, sparked an interest in “law as a means of challenging discrimination.” The interest in the law would ultimately influence him to volunteer as the NAACP representative to challenge the segregation of black students at UT’s Law School. Publically, with the help of his NAACP advisors Sweatt maintained a public charade. He continually “declared that his action was taken as an individual and that he was not affiliated with any crusading Negro group. He did not want to be a guinea pig in the segregation question. I just went to Austin to try to become a student at the university because that's the only place I can get the training I want." He would maintained this charade throughout the four-year trial ordeal. Privately with his friends he was not “merely a postman who desired to be a lawyer, but a sensitive, determined, and often radical civil rights activist.” Sweatt would attend several meetings with NAACP representatives: Durham, White, and Wesley. These experts provided extensive training and coaching techniques need for his participation in trials, and during public speaking engagements. The public speaking engagements helped raise money
