state supreme court followed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down "separate but equal" segregation as violating due process in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and O'Connell's judicial philosophy was characterized by conservatism and gradualist integration. It was O'Connell's belief that, despite the Supreme Court's decision three years earlier, integration should be further delayed because "violence in university communities and a critical disruption of the university system would occur if Negro students are permitted to enter the state white universities at this time, including the Law School of the University of Florida, of which it is an integral part." State Ex Rel. Hawkins v. Board of Control, 83 So.2d 20 (1957). His fellow justices elected him chief justice of the court in 1967, in which position he would serve only briefly. O'Connell served on the court until the Florida Board of Regents selected him to be the president of the University of Florida later in 1967. University president O'Connell was the sixth president of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and the first alumnus of the university to be appointed as its president. When O'Connell assumed the presidency of the university in 1967, the student protest movement was peaking nationwide, and numerous demonstrations, both peaceful and militant, were held on the Florida campus during his six-year term. Faculty-administration relations were also strained, because many professors were sympathetic to the student protesters and their various social and political goals. O'Connell's administration canceled classes on May 6, 1970, the day after the Kent State shootings, and declared a day of mourning. It was the first time classes had been canceled at the University of Florida during his administration. The University of Florida had integrated racially in 1958 without violence and with little protest. By the 1967 fall term, however, only sixty-one black students were enrolled, and many black students were actually foreign exchange students. The Black Student Union organized a sit-in protest inside the university president's office suite on April 15, 1971; the students were demanding a black cultural center. The occupation ended with the peaceful arrest of sixty-six students, after O'Connell had threatened them with expulsion. In the aftermath of the sit-in, O'Connell refused to grant complete amnesty to the student demonstrators who had participated, and 125 of the university's black students and several black faculty members left the university in protest. On balance, O'Connell's administration did much