The Forgotten Daughter of Black Wall Street: Ada Sipuel Fisher

Black Wall Street was in ruins. Flames consumed everything they'd built in Tulsa's prosperous Greenwood District. Rev. Travis Sipuel and his wife Martha Belle were now survivors of one of America's worst racial massacres, watching helplessly as their church, their home, and their community turned to ash in 1921. Three years later in Chickasha, Oklahoma, they welcomed a daughter into the world—a baby girl who would grow up to transform their family's trauma into the most powerful weapon she could wield: the law itself. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher took the ashes of Black Wall Street's destruction and forged them into a legal revolution that would change America forever.

From the Ashes of Greenwood: A Legacy Forged in Fire

Ada's parents, Rev. Travis Bruce Sipuel and Martha Belle Smith, fled Greenwood, Tulsa, in 1921 after the Tulsa Race Massacre left 300 dead and the town, then known as Black Wall Street due to its prosperity, in smoking ruins. They had been building a congregation for the Church of God in Christ in the heart of what was America's most prosperous Black community. Rev. Sipuel rented a house in the Greenwood District on North Greenwood and leased a building for the North Greenwood COGIC at 700 N. Greenwood.

When the mob came, they lost everything. "The house was burned down. The church was destroyed, all of it was destroyed," her son Bruce would later recount. "They moved from there to Chickasha."

But they didn't lose their spirit.

Three years after escaping the massacre that destroyed Black Wall Street, they welcomed Ada into the world in Chickasha, Oklahoma. What they didn't know was that they were raising the girl who would become one of America's most fearless civil rights warriors.

The Making of a Legal Revolutionary

From day one, Ada was different. She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1941 as valedictorian. Smart wasn't enough to describe her—she was brilliant, driven, and had what her son would later call a "militant" spirit. At Langston University, she had already fought for changes as a student, doing something "incredibly courageous that nobody else in the world did anything like"—sneaking into the president's office to use his phone and call the state representative to complain about conditions at the school.

This was revolution in the making, disguised as academic excellence.

But here's where the story gets really powerful. In 1945, the NAACP came knocking on the Sipuel family door. They wanted someone to challenge Oklahoma's segregated law schools. They approached Ada's brother Lemuel first, a World War II veteran, but he declined, saying "he didn't want to do it because he had just got through coming out of a fight that had postponed his life, put his life on hold for awhile to finish, and didn't want to get involved with something else that would take up a considerable part of his life."

That's when 21-year-old Ada, who had been quietly listening in the corner, spoke up with three words that would change American history: "Well, I'll do it."

"That's how she became the plaintiff because Dr. Bullock also knew about her and thought, 'Well, okay, if we can't get the first Sipuel we'll get the second Sipuel.'" - Bruce Sipuel Fisher

Walking Into the Storm: David vs. Goliath, Oklahoma Style

When Ada applied to the University of Oklahoma Law School in January 1946, she knew exactly what she was walking into. She knew that Lloyd Gaines, the last NAACP plaintiff in a similar case in Missouri, had disappeared and was never seen again. She knew the stories of lynchings passed down in her community. She remembered being six years old when a 19-year-old Black man, Henry Argo, was accused of raping a white woman and was shot through the concrete wall of his Chickasha jail cell and stabbed through the heart by someone in an angry lynch mob.

But she applied anyway, driving to Norman—a sundown town where "all African-Americans had to be out of town by sundown" and where "the few blacks that ever tried to move into Norman in '20s and '30s were expelled from Norman."

"You can't imagine what kind of courage that it took. Here you've got probably two of the most courageous African-American men in the state of Oklahoma" traveling with her—Roscoe Dunjee and Dr. W.J. Bullock.

When young Bruce asked his mother if she was afraid, she told him: "You can't be around these kind of people and be afraid, they just give you too much strength."

The rejection letter was swift and predictable. But Ada had Thurgood Marshall in her corner, and together they took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Victory That Shook the South

In 1948, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. that the state of Oklahoma must provide instruction for blacks equal to that of whites. Thurgood Marshall acted as the head NAACP lawyer for this case and the justices ruled unanimously.

Oklahoma's response? They literally threw together a "law school" in five days—nothing more than a room in the state capitol building. Ada looked at this sham and said, "Not today." More litigation followed until finally, on June 18, 1949, Sipuel was the first African-American admitted to the University of Oklahoma's law school.

But her battles were far from over. Even after being admitted, "they brought all the white students down to the front of the class. And then at the very back of the class they put one chair with a sign over it saying, 'Colored.'" When she walked into that classroom and "saw that chair with 'Colored' in it, she realized that that was her spot. And so she had to march up the steps and sit in the colored chair."

"Girlie, we're just building a record." - Thurgood Marshall's constant refrain to Ada during disappointments

Eventually, when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation within the school violated the 14th Amendment, "when they went home on that Friday the signs were up as usual. And when they got there on that following Monday the signs were gone." And Ada? "She moved down on the front row."

The Legacy That Lives On

Ada demolished barriers with the precision of a master architect. She graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Laws degree and began practicing law in her hometown of Chickasha in 1952. But her impact went far beyond her personal success.

After practicing law, she earned her master's degree in history from OU and joined the faculty at Langston University as Chair of the Department of Social Sciences, retiring in 1987 as the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs. But perhaps the most poetic justice came in 1992, when Oklahoma governor David Walters appointed her to the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma—the very institution that had rejected her for so many years.

She noted this appointment "completes a forty-five-year cycle," adding, "Having suffered severely from bigotry and racial discrimination as a student, I am sensitive to that kind of thing."

Her son Bruce remembers her radical spirit never dimmed: "I remember during the Anita Hill thing she would go to the board meetings with a button on saying, 'I believe in Anita Hill.' She was still radical, I mean, Mom didn't stop being who she was until the end."

Why Ada's Story Matters Now More Than Ever

In our galleries and collections, we see pieces that tell stories of resilience, triumph, and the unbreakable spirit of our people. But sometimes the most powerful artifacts aren't objects—they're the living legacies of individuals who refused to accept limitations.

Ada Sipuel Fisher's story is the embodiment of what Black Wall Street represented: economic power, educational excellence, and the audacity to demand equality. Her parents lost their business and home in the massacre, but they raised a daughter who would use the law itself as her weapon against injustice.

Today, when we talk about representation in law, in business, in academia, we're standing on foundations that Ada helped pour. Her case was a precursor for Brown v. Board of Education. Every Black lawyer, every integrated classroom, every civil rights victory that followed carries a piece of her DNA.

The Art of Resistance

As someone who works with African American art and artifacts daily, I'm constantly reminded that our greatest treasures aren't always hanging on walls or sitting in display cases. Sometimes they're the stories of ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

Ada Sipuel Fisher took the pain of her parents' experience during the Tulsa Race Massacre and transformed it into purpose. She took rejection and turned it into revolution. She took a system designed to exclude her and forced it to include not just her, but generations that would follow.

In 1981, the Smithsonian Institution designated her as one of the 150 outstanding Black Women Who Have Had the Most Impact on The Course of American History. But beyond the accolades and honorary degrees, her true masterpiece was the courage to say "I'll do it" when everyone else said "it can't be done."

The Stone the Builders Rejected

After her 1995 death, the law school named a garden to honor her, and a bronze plaque talked of "how the stone that the builders once rejected becomes the cornerstone." That biblical reference reveals prophecy fulfilled in real time.

From the ashes of Black Wall Street rose a woman who would help rebuild not just a community, but an entire legal framework that made true equality possible. The law school has since received more than $1 million to endow the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Chair in Civil Rights, Race and Justice in Law to teach, research and empower future lawyers.

Her legacy lives on every time a young Black student walks into a law school classroom, every time justice prevails over prejudice, every time someone has the courage to say "I'll do it" when the world says they can't.

Ada Sipuel Fisher integrated possibility itself into the American dream. And that, my friends, is a masterpiece worth celebrating, preserving, and sharing with every generation that follows.

The daughter of Black Wall Street became the architect of legal equality. Her blueprint is still building better tomorrows.