The dynamics of how the dual system of higher education in Jim Crow America emerged and operated is explored in this article in the context of the largest city in the 20th century U.S. South: Houston, Texas. The history herein moves from a pragmatic response to a deep need for postsecondary educational opportunity in the 1920s to a major expansion in the 1940s in the face of the lawsuit of Heman Sweatt to the 1960s after state-mandated segregation is officially ended.