The century-long struggle of blacks to achieve the education white Americans had long enjoyed culminated in a historic Supreme Court decision that happens to carry Topeka's name.
The Supreme Court declared racial segregation of America's schools unconstitutional with the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision of 1954 -- and forever changed America.
Lawyers for the Topeka chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People listed the Rev. Oliver Brown's name first among the 13 plaintiffs when they filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Kansas in 1951 that asked for an end to segregated education in Topeka. However, Brown played a minor role in the case.
Some plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education case and their children were photographed in 1994 outside Monroe Elementary School. From left are Carol Kay Lawton Nutter, Leola Montgomery, Linda Brown Thompson, Victoria Lawton Benson, Ruth Ann Scales, Vivian Scales, Lena Carper and Zelma Henderson.
Cheryl Brown Henderson, founder of the Brown Foundation and the youngest child of Brown, said the story was really about the brilliant NAACP lawyers who strategized a nationwide attack on segregation and the struggles of all plaintiffs in the Topeka case. The story also is about the four other segregation cases filed in the District of Columbia; Prince Edward County in Virginia; Clarendon County in South Carolina; and New Castle County in Delaware.
Roots in Topeka case
Paul E. Wilson, assistant attorney general of Kansas when the Topeka NAACP filed its case in 1950, defended the state before the Supreme Court. In his book, "A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education," Wilson wrote that Kansas stood apart from the other states where segregation was being challenged.
"The Kansas statute under attack in Brown permitted, but did not require, racial segregation in the public elementary schools in 12 cities with 15,000 or more inhabitants, designated by law as 'Cities of the First Class,' " he wrote. The laws of the three other states and the District of Columbia required segregation at all grade levels.
Kansas was also the only state involved in the lawsuit to enter the Union as a free state and had a relatively small population of blacks.
Willy Tibbs, left, of Parkdale, receives some breathing and playing tips at Monroe from his teacher Mrs. Collins in this December 1974 photo.
McKinley Burnett, president of the Topeka chapter of the NAACP, had exhausted his diplomatic tactics for addressing segregation with the Topeka Board of Education by 1950. For 12 years he and other NAACP officials had pushed for integration of Topeka's elementary schools but was ignored by a school board that didn't want to address the issue.
At the time, there were 18 all-white elementary schools and four black elementary schools in Topeka. Junior and high schools were integrated, but the district enforced separate sports teams and extracurricular clubs for whites and blacks.
Burnett enlisted the support of the national NAACP, which had shifted from a strategy of demanding equal, though still separate, schools to confronting desegregation directly. The local chapter devised a plan to ask black parents to try to enroll their children at the white school nearest their homes at the beginning of the 1950-'51 school term.
Knowing that principals would refuse to enroll black children in the white schools, the NAACP would then have those parents sign a lawsuit charging the Topeka Board of Education with violating their 14th Amendment rights. The plaintiffs' complaint was filed on Feb. 28, 1951.
Zelma Henderson belonged to the Topeka NAACP in 1950 when Charles Scott, of the law firm Scott, Scott and Scott, asked her to represent North Topeka in the suit. Henderson's children, Vicki, 4, and Donald, 6, attended McKinley Elementary School.
"I had never witnessed segregated schools because all in western Kansas were integrated," she said. "I was quite surprised when I came to Topeka and found out they were segregated ... because in small cities, they integrated them and we got along fine together. And I could not see why they couldn't get along here, too. So that was one of the things that prompted me to try to straighten the situation out and do my little part."
A student packs up her papers and books at the end of the school year at Monroe Elementary School in this 1975 photo.
Zelma Henderson's children took the bus from the family's home on N.E. Jefferson Street to McKinley, on the northwest side of town.
At the same time, Oliver Brown tried to enroll his 8-year-old daughter, Linda, in Sumner Elementary School, which was in the family's neighborhood. Linda was a student at Monroe Elementary School and, like Zelma Henderson's children, rode the bus to school.
Unlike some of the Southern locations of the lawsuits, Zelma Henderson said none of the 13 plaintiffs in the Topeka case suffered serious consequences of threats, harassment or being fired from their jobs because of their involvement in the case.
However, she said, blacks did worry early in the case.
"I understand that some of the teachers felt that they would be out of jobs if they were integrated, and that was not our purpose at all," she said. "We wanted the teachers integrated with the children. Our teachers were excellent teachers. They were very well-qualified to teach any child."
Editor's note: Topeka will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year -- and there is much to learn about the city before then. "Our Town: Topeka," a weekly series that will appear on Sundays through September, will explore Topeka's rich history and the people who have made the city what it is today.
Here are some books to check out if you want more information about the Brown v. Board of Education case:
"A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education," by Paul E. Wilson, 1955
"The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation," by Raymond Wolters, 1992
"Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution," by Jack Greenberg, 1994
"Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy," by James T. Patterson, 2001
For more information on the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, view its Web site at brownvboard.org.
Cheryl Brown Henderson, founder of the Brown Foundation
:: The board serves as a living tribute
:: The mythology around the case
:: Travels all over the country
:: Plan and sponsor commemorative activities
:: Bringing current events into lectures
:: The Brown decision affects everyone
Zelma Henderson, plaintiff
:: Why couldn't we get along, too?
:: Jan. 22, 2003 -- Brown case subject of lesson
:: Dec. 20, 2002 -- Joint effort encouraged; Monroe NIA to discuss development plans
:: Dec. 19, 2002 -- Monroe NIA to hear new plan
:: Nov. 26, 2002 -- Fate of Sumner School won't please everyone
:: Oct. 30, 2002 -- Project takes second step
:: Oct. 3, 2002 -- Brown site drills wells for heating
:: Sept. 7, 2002 -- Panel named to mark Brown anniversary
:: May 29, 2002 -- Editorial -- Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education: Steps to preserve it
:: Feb. 28, 2002 -- Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka information release
:: Feb. 28, 2002 -- Status of school buildings involved in Brown
:: March 5, 2001 -- Brown lawsuit opened doors nationwide
:: Jan. 11, 2001 -- Landmark: The spotlight is back on Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
:: July 30, 2000 -- Q and A - Historic school undergoes restoration
:: Feb. 29, 2000 -- Monroe site to open in '03
:: May 19, 1999 -- Historic ruling feted with speeches, song
:: April 30, 1999 -- Money allocated to historic Monroe School
:: April 9, 1999 -- Park service officials get chance to see Monroe, Sumner schools
When filing the case, one of the lawyers organized the names of the plaintiffs so Oliver Brown's name was listed first. His daughter Cheryl Henderson Brown thinks the order was dictated by predominant chauvinist attitudes of the day. The other 12 plaintiffs were women, and Darlene Brown led Oliver Brown in the alphabet.
The Kansas trial
Wilson wrote in his book that the issue for the Kansas district court to decide was whether racially segregated elementary schools constituted a denial of equal protection of the law, even if physical conditions of the schools were to be found equal.
"In my heart I found no objection to the change sought," Wilson wrote. "If I had been a Kansas legislator or member of the Topeka Board of Education, I should have been pleased to vote to repeal the segregation statute and repudiate the public school policy that it permitted. But I was not a legislator ... I was a lawyer committed to uphold the law and the adversary process."
Oliver Brown and the other plaintiffs were represented by Charles and John Scott and Charles Bledsoe, of Topeka, and Robert L. Carter and Jack Greenberg, staff attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who traveled from New York to argue the case.
On June 25, 1951, the three district court judges listened to testimony from all 13 plaintiffs, including Zelma Henderson.
"I was a plaintiff and I had to get on the stand," she said. "It was kind of frightening and yet, when you're determined, you get a little more strength. They had to calm me down a time or two, but I made it through."
After nine hours and 20 minutes of arguments, the judges retreated to their chambers to form a decision. They ruled in favor of the Topeka Board of Education, saying the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson remained the court's best guide and it only required the physical equality of facilities, curricula, instruction and other tangible school services.
At the Supreme Court
At the same time Brown was being litigated in Kansas, South Carolina defended its segregation statute against black residents of Clarendon County, who claimed inequalities in facilities and unconstitutionality of the segregation statute.
State courts ultimately upheld segregation in all five of the cases, and the NAACP took them to the Supreme Court.
Arguments for the cases began Dec. 9, 1952, with Kansas first on the docket. A small-town Kansan, Wilson wrote that he was in awe of being in the nation's capital to argue before the Supreme Court and saved a front-page newspaper clipping from that morning's Washington Post. It read:
"Some observers feel that the hardest case to decide will be that of Kansas which filed its brief only yesterday, after a prod by the Court itself last month.
"In the three other state cases the lower courts have found as a fact that Negro schools are physically inferior. But in Kansas the court found equality of facilities, yet also found that segregation itself has 'a detrimental effect on the colored children' and declared that segregation 'has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system'."
In Washington, Wilson joined a star-studded cast of lawyers, including famed constitutional lawyer John W. Davis, in preparing the defense. A young Thurgood Marshall, as well as Spottswood Robinson II, Oliver Hill and other NAACP lawyers, argued for the plaintiffs.
In the end, the Supreme Court heard the cases twice. After the initial trial, the justices, who represented a wide range of philosophical perspectives, were unable to reach a consensus and called the cases back for reargument.
The nation reacts
Wilson and Kansas Attorney General Harold Fatzer were sitting at their desks in Topeka at 12:52 p.m. May 17, 1954, when the phones began ringing and they learned that the Supreme Court had banned school segregation.
The court's decision stated, "We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe it does."
Wilson writes that Burnett, president of the Topeka branch of the NAACP, said, "Thank God for the Supreme Court" and announced a celebration for that evening at Monroe School.
While much of the racially divided country reeled under the decision, Topeka remained an island of order. Zelma Henderson remembers that no demonstrations or tumult accompanied desegregation in Topeka's schools.
"They accepted it," she said. "It wasn't too long they integrated the teachers and principals."
The South wasn't so complacent.
Whites in Prince Edward County chose to shut down the public schools for four years rather than integrate, wrote Raymond Wolters in "The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation." White segregationists also employed more subtle, but no less powerful, methods of maintaining separation. Wolters wrote that "white flight" to the suburbs from the District of Columbia soon resulted in an almost all-black, resegregated public school system.
Henderson said that other social improvements followed swiftly for blacks in Topeka. Fancy downtown restaurants accepted black diners, and Henderson could stay in any motel when she traveled.
Erin Adamson can be reached at (785) 295-1185 or email@example.com.
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