Board built schools made of
brick all over the city to
educate white & black children.
Monroe School is one of the
city's black schools.
The facades of the buildings hid the inequities of educational experiences within Topeka's segregated school system.
Schools that black schools attended did not have the same books white students used. The libraries in black schools had fewer books and they were old, out of date. Repairs to black schools ignored, for years.
The schools in Topeka, Kansas looked the same, from the outside. The educations white and black children received were very different. Separate schools did not produce equal education.
Black children were also burdened because they had a harder time getting to their schools. Black children, in many cases, couldn't walk to their neighborhood schools, because the closest school was a white school. They were bused miles away to black schools. Black students, and their families, did not have the experience of school as central and important to their community, because it wasn't in their community.
In 1948 Esther Brown, a Jewish woman living in Merriam, Kansas became incensed when repairs to a local dilapidated black school were ignored while the South Park School Board was pushing a a bond issue to build new white schools. Esther went to the Kansas NAACP and urged the organization to launch a campaign to end segregation in schools.
Designated a National
Historic Site in 1991,
Monroe School is set
up to show Jim Crow's
separation of the races.
This map of the continental
U.S. shows that school
segregation was required
in 16 states & optional in
4 states, including Kansas.
The NAACP created a group called "The Citizens Committee" to lobby the Topeka Board of Education for integrated schools. Carefully documenting each step of the effort to desegregate Topeka schools, the NAACP found black parents who would attempt to enroll their children in white schools. The parents were denied enrollment to their schools of choice, setting up grounds for a lawsuit based on discrimination. Oliver Brown was assigned as lead plaintiff in the planned lawsuit.
On February 28, 1951, a lawsuit was filed against the Topeka School Board, claiming discrimination in the education of black students. The United States District Court for Kansas found for the Topeka School Board, setting the stage for an appeal to the Federal District Court.
Long story short, arguments in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 9, 1952. On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."
States that practiced segregation in public education did not make plans to swiftly implement the court ruling. Threats were made against black students attempting to enroll in white schools in southern states. There was concern for public safety.
Segregation in public education was just one obstacle black Americans faced in the "Land of the Free." Equal treatment under the law was not practiced throughout America.
There was discrimination in
public places, the workplace,
in housing.
Blacks went to classes in nonviolent resistance. They sat at white only lunch counters and asked for service. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. For refusing to obey the city's segregation laws, she was arrested. In protest, blacks boycotted public transportation.
Throughout the South, blacks faced poll taxes and literacy tests when attempting to register to vote. In essence, Americans, who are black, were denied the right to vote. This institutionalized disenfranchisement meant that Black Americans had no say in local, state and national politics.
Voter registration drives were held. Marches were held. There was violence.
News footage of police beating
Alabama brought the struggle
for equal rights into American
homes.
I grew up watching news footage of Civil Rights demonstrations, sit ins and marches. The shock of seeing peaceful marchers beaten by police with batons stays with me today.
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