Equal Justice: The Courage of Ada Sipuel

by William Bernhardt

The law said America kept the black and white races separate but equal. From the time she was a young girl growing up in Chickasha, Oklahoma, however, Ada Sipuel learned that separate was never equal. Ada hoped to fight for equality for all people by becoming a lawyer, but the only law school in Oklahoma refused to admit her because of the color of her skin. Ada learned that civil disobedience could combat inequality. Her bravery set in motion a chain of events that broke down barriers of injustice in America.

135 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2006

About the author

William Bernhardt is the author of over sixty books, including the bestselling Daniel Pike and Ben Kincaid legal thrillers, the historical novels Challengers of the Dust and Nemesis, three books of poetry, and the ten Red Sneaker books on fiction writing.

In addition, Bernhardt founded the Red Sneaker Writers Center to mentor aspiring writers. The Center hosts an annual writers conference (WriterCon), small-group seminars, a monthly newsletter, and a bi-weekly podcast. More than three dozen of Bernhardt’s students have subsequently published with major houses. He is also the owner of Balkan Press, which publishes poetry and fiction as well as the literary journal Conclave.

Bernhardt has received the Southern Writers Guild’s Gold Medal Award, the Royden B. Davis Distinguished Author Award (University of Pennsylvania) and the H. Louise Cobb Distinguished Author Award (Oklahoma State), which is given "in recognition of an outstanding body of work that has profoundly influenced the way in which we understand ourselves and American society at large." He has been nominated for the Oklahoma Book Award eighteen times in three different categories, and has won the award twice. Library Journal called him “the master of the courtroom drama.” The Vancouver Sun called him “the American equivalent of P.G. Wodehouse and John Mortimer.”

In addition to his novels and poetry, he has written plays, a musical (book and score), humor, children stories, biography, and puzzles. He has edited two anthologies (Legal Briefs and Natural Suspect) as fundraisers for The Nature Conservancy and the Children’s Legal Defense Fund. OSU named him “Oklahoma’s Renaissance Man.”

In his spare time, he has enjoyed surfing, digging for dinosaurs, trekking through the Himalayas, paragliding, scuba diving, caving, zip-lining over the canopy of the Costa Rican rain forest, and jumping out of an airplane at 10,000 feet. In 2013, he became a Jeopardy! champion winning over $20,000.

When Bernhardt delivered the keynote address at the San Francisco Writers Conference, chairman Michael Larsen noted that in addition to penning novels, Bernhardt can “write a sonnet, play a sonata, plant a garden, try a lawsuit, teach a class, cook a gourmet meal, beat you at Scrabble, and work the New York Times crossword in under five minutes.”

Reviews

[Eliz]

Found this in my Mom’s bookshelf. Appreciated learning more about Oklahoma history, and the clear explanation of the legal arguments used to overturn Oklahoma’s segregation clause of the state constitution.

Oh, for the days when the Supreme Court was expanding civil rights!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I grew up hearing about the Civil Rights Movement in the deep south, I'd never heard much of anything about the struggle in Oklahoma. Even though I've lived in Oklahoma for decades, it was something that never came up, even in history classes. Equal Justice: The Courage of Ada Sipuel helps to fill in the gap that's missing from Oklahoma's history. There were no law schools for Black students and it was illegal by state law for her to attend the University of Oklahoma. She fought for her right to go to the University of Oklahoma all the way to the Supreme Court. The most exciting part was the argument before the Supreme Court of the United States.
This is a book for younger readers, probably middle-school,so it doesn't go into the kind of stress, doubts, and fears that a book written for adults might. But it is a good historical read about a brave woman in the Civil Rights Movement who doesn't have the kind of fame that people like James Meridith, in Mississippi, got when he enrolled in Ol' Miss.

[Rick Ludwig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a great fan of William Bernhardt's great legal thrillers and other novels, short stories,and poetry. I knew he could write exciting and thought-provoking works for an adult audience, but this is the first book for younger readers of his that I have read. To say That I'm impressed would be a gross understatement. Bernhardt tells an important story here that is complete, complex, moving, and easily accessible to his target audience. As someone old enough to remember the slow, resistant death of segregation, I realise how important it is for children, who might actually doubt that such things could ever happen, to experience through the life of Ada Sipuel the pain and unfairness inherent in such a system. Without ever becoming preachy or making his characters seem idealised, Bernhardt presents an insightful view of human society that will leave it's reader wiser and receptive to the plights of others from other cultures or other times.