Rubey Mosley Hulen

Concurrent with his judicial service, Hulen was a lecturer at Washington University Law School.[1]

On June 19, 1950, three African Americans attempted to enter the Fairgrounds Park Pool in St. Louis, Missouri, in contravention of the city's segregation policy, which had been re-instituted following one day of integration in 1949, which culminated in Fairground Park riot. A pool attendant told the three African Americans attempting access that they needed permits to enter the pool. The St. Louis chapter of the NAACP sued in United States District Court, seeking a court order requiring desegregation of the city's swimming pools.

In the St. Louis case, in the course of an exchange with the city's attorney (who happened to be named James Crowe), Hulen asked rhetorically: "Does the viewpoint of the community set aside the Constitution? Is the Constitution to be shelved for an hour, or set aside, because one part of the community happens to have an antipathy towards it?"

In his ruling, Hulen "suggested that racial exclusion from any municipal pool, even if another truly equal pool were provided, might still violate the Constitution."[2] Hulen observed that a comparable pool "may mitigate discrimination but would not validate it as to other sections of the city."

Author Jeff Wiltse remarks that "Hulen seemed to be saying that a black swimmer who had to walk past a whites-only pool to get to a truly equal Jim Crow pool would not be receiving equal treatment under the law, as mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment."

This is the essence of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, that a black student should not have to travel to a more distant segregated school. In that case, the plaintiff's daughter, Linda, a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was only seven blocks from her house.[3]