Winner of the 2011 Writers' League of Texas Award for Best Book of Non-fiction by the Writers' League of Texas

Winner of the 2010 Carr P. Collins Award for Best Work of Non-fiction by the Texas Institute of Letters

Winner of the 2010 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History by the Texas State Historical Association

BEFORE BROWN:
Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road To Justice
 

"It is after reading Before Brown by Gary M. Lavergne, that I feel like a part of my father I never quite knew has been revealed."  Hemella L. Sweatt, MD

"He spins the history as a yarn that legendary folklorist J. Frank Dobie might have spun--except this story is true." Joan C. Browning for Southern Studies

(c) Matt Nager Photography

"At last someone has told the story of Heman Sweatt, one of the great sons of the struggle for freedom and justice, with all the drama and passion it deserves."
Amilcar Shabazz, Professor and Chair, W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, U. Mass Amherst

"What a great idea to bring to life the ordeal of Heman Marion Sweatt, his fight for justice, and the landmark victory that paved the way to Brown vs. the Board of Education.  And who better than Gary Lavergne, a talented writer and admissions officer at the center of other Texan breakthroughs in the quest for greater access to higher education, to write this compelling narrative?" Patrick Weil, Directeur de Recherche au CNRS, Centre d'histoire sociale du XXe siècle, Université de Paris 1, Sorbonne-Pantheon
 

BEFORE BROWN:
Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road To Justice