Brown v. Topeka Board of Education
Oral History Collection
8.1 Appendix A: Biographies of the Interviewees
Jack Alexander
Mr. Jack Alexander was born on December 7, 1930, in Iola, Kansas, to
Agnes Stewart Alexander and James Alexander. Throughout the time he
was growing up, the family resided on the east side of Topeka, around
Washington School, in an area called Mudtown because of its un-surfaced
streets. Mr. Alexander attended Washington Grade School (his father
worked for the administration and an uncle worked as a custodian there),
East Topeka Junior High, and Topeka High School. He was attending Topeka
High when the Brown case was filed. At that time, only the grade schools
were segregated, although there were separate sports teams at the at
the high school level.
Because of his father’s job, and the fact that he helped out
when he was older, Jack Alexander had the distinct advantage of seeing
a different side of a key participant in the African American schools
and community than others did. He had a close relationship with Mr.
Harrison Caldwell (who was sort of the Superintendent of the African
American Schools and principal at Washington), often accompanying him
on trips out of town on school business while in high school.
After high school, he attended Washburn University before he entered
the U.S. Navy in March of 1952; he remained in the Navy until 1956.
In 1972, Mr. Alexander became the first and only African-American to
be elected as the Topeka city water commissioner. He served in that
capacity until 1985. That year he went to work at the Kansas Department
of Health and Environment; when he left the agency, he was the chief
of permits’ compliance and enforcement.
Vera Jones Allen
Vera (Jones) Allen was born in Charles City, Virginia, in 1913. She
graduated from Virginia State College (now Virginia State University)
with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. She continued
postgraduate study at the University of North Carolina. Her career included
serving as a primary grade teacher, a visiting teacher supervisor and
a principal. She retired in 1980 from the position of director of instruction.
Vera met her husband, Edward Allen, while in college. Once they married,
the new couple moved to Farmville, Virginia. That move associated her
with the school integration care of Davis v. Prince Edward County (one
of the companion cases under Brown v. the Board of Education). Vera
Allen taught school in Prince Edward County in a two room segregated
school for African American children.
As her career progressed she became one of the first women hired by
the school district as director of instruction. Vera Allen found herself
involved in efforts to integrate county schools when in 1951 her daughter
Edwilda Allen joined a student strike protesting conditions at segregated
Morton High School. In 1995 Vera Allen again found herself associated
with the historic school case. As head of the Martha E. Forrester Council
of Women, she organized efforts to preserve the old high school building.
The organization’s efforts were successful and the old school
building once an overcrowded reminder of segregation is now a Historic
Landmark. The R.R. Morton High School building will eventually be used
as a museum and conference center. Mrs. Allen still resides in Farmville.
Her daughter Edwilda is now a band teacher at Farmville’s integrated
high school.
Anonymous
Mr. XXXXX was born in Topeka, Kansas. He graduated from Monroe School
on June 3, and did not receive any other formal education. While attending
Monroe School, he played on the softball and soccer teams. In the 1920s,
he worked for Himer’s Grocery Store and the City Hotel in Holton,
Kansas. From the 1920s to the 1970s Mr. XXXXX worked for Santa Fe Railroad
in the Store Department. He also served in the Army during World War
II (1941-1945). During the interview, Mr. XXXXX talks about his various
memories of Topeka from the 1910s on.
Charles Batson
Mr. Charles Batson was born in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, on April
24, 1917, to Bertha Dysort and Irvin Batson. His father’s family
escaped slavery in Texas to Missouri where they came established the
family farm. His mother died in 1924, and his father passed away eleven
years later in 1931. He attended grade school and junior high school
there, but only went to high school for two years at Kansas Vocational
Tech in Topeka.
After Mr. Batson finished high school, he worked at Postal Wade Glass
Company in Kansas City, Missouri, for a time. He spent some time in
the service during World War II, and after his discharge, he moved to
Topeka to stay. Mr. Batson first worked out at Forbes Field when he
returned to the area; after that he was transferred to the Oklahoma
Air Command (the old supply depot across the street from Forbes) where
he worked until 1960. After that, he was transferred to the VA Hospital
and stayed there until retiring in 1973.
Mr. Batson married Edith Crouder of Sedalia, Missouri. The couple has
a daughter who lives in Louisiana. Edith Batson passed away in March
of 1982. Mr. Batson was a member of the executive committee of the local
chapter of the NAACP at the time the Brown case was filed; he passed
away on January 1, 1993.
Eliza Briggs
Eliza Briggs was born in Clarendon County, South Carolina. Her family
lived on a farm raising cotton, corn and pigs. Unlike some African Americans
in the county, the land belonged to their family. Mrs. Briggs’
mother had inherited the land from her parents. As a child Eliza and
her siblings were only able to attend school six months out of the school
year. They attended Liberty Hill Elementary School and later St. Paul.
During the remaining months the children helped around the farm. At
one time there were six children in the family. Three of her siblings
died at an early age.
Eliza recalls the poor conditions at Liberty Hill Elementary, where
classrooms did not have desks. She and her classmates sat on benches
and school assignments were completed while holding paper and books
on their laps. For African-American high school students, education
ended at 10th grade. Four years after graduating from St. Paul, Eliza
married Harry Briggs. The two had grown up in the same neighborhood.
The Briggs family grew over the years to five children. They were typical
parents concerned about education and opportunities for children.
Rev. J. A. DeLaine was a man Mr. & Mrs. Briggs knew and respected.
It was his urging that encouraged the Briggs family and others to join
the case against the county school board. They were all concerned about
the hardship created by not having bus transportation for their children.
Even after the strategy moved from buses to dismantling segregated schools,
the Briggs family agreed to stay involved. Although there were more
than 30 plaintiffs in the NAACP case, the name of Harry Briggs headed
the list of petitioners. All who signed on as petitioners faced various
forms of backlash. The Briggs family was no longer able to find anyone
to gin their cotton. Mr. Briggs was fired from his job at a local gas
station. The timing of his job loss was particularly painful since it
took place on Christmas Eve.
After the Briggs case met with success as part of the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Brown decision, the family moved to Florida. From there
they moved to New York living in the city for 16 years before returning
to Summerton in Clarendon County, South Carolina. Harry Briggs died
in 1986 and was survived by his wife and children. Mrs. Eliza Briggs
died in 1998.
Onan Burnett
Mr. Onan Burnett was born on August 24, 1921, in Oskaloosa, Kansas,
to Edna (born in Perry, Kansas) and Jesse Burnett (born in Oskaloosa).
The couple had three other children: Oleta, Eldon, and Evelyn. The Brunettes
can trace their roots back to slavery in Tennessee. The family moved
to Topeka when Onan was nearly two years old; his father got a job at
the Diagnostic Center (the former vocational and technical school).
The couple has a son, Kevin. Mr. Burnett's parent are both buried in
Topeka.
Mr. Burnett attended the partially integrated, rural Rice Elementary
School in Shawnee County. He attended seventh grade at Monroe School,
even though his family lived two blocks from Van Buren School, and ninth
grade at Crane Junior High. He attended Highland Park High School so
that he could play football and basketball. His sister, Oleta Burnett,
was a student teacher at Monroe School at the time the Brown case.
Mr. Burnett went into the Air Force in 1941, and was among the first
group of African Americans to attend the Army Air Force Maintenance
School in Amarillo, Texas. His group had the highest GPA of any class
that went through the school. His bitterest memories of that time centered
around the fact that at Fort Knox the German and Italian prisoners of
war were allowed to go to the movies, but the African American service
men could not. After leaving the service in 1946, Mr. Burnett did his
undergraduate study at Washburn University and graduate study at both
the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Kansas.
Mr. Burnett and his wife, Norma Jean, were married on July 15, 1956.
Norma Jean was born in Emporia, Kansas, in 1928. Mr. Burnett passed
away on January 1, 2000.
Broadus Butler, Sr.
Mr. Broadus Butler, Sr., was born in Greenville County, South Carolina.
He grew up on a farm, and he himself was a farmer. He attended the school
that was just outside the town of Simpsonville; at that time the school
was for first through eleventh grade (students graduated after the eleventh
grade). He went to college at South Carolina State after the end of
World War II.
The school outside of Simpsonville was a segregated school. Mr. Butler
had to walk 41/2 miles to and from school; this walk took him right
by the white school located in the town. The roads in the area were
not paved and the white school bus would often splash water on the children
walking after it had rained. Like most African American schools at the
time, the students at Simpsonville School had desks and textbooks that
were "hand-me-downs" from the white school. The school term
was only five, maybe six, months long. It started in late October, after
harvest, and ended in the spring, around planting time. In addition
to this, the students would go back to school during the summer, during
July and for part of August, in what was called the lay-by time; this
was during the hottest part of the summer.
At South Carolina State Mr. Butler's concentration was in vocational
agriculture. He wanted to teach vocational agriculture and to be a school
principal eventually. Back then, after graduation a member of the State
Board of Education interviewed the graduates and assigned them to their
first position. His first position consisted of teaching at the school
in St. Paul, as well as the principal there, and he was also the supervisor
of three other schools in the area. Understandably, Mr. Butler did not
like having that much responsibility involved with his first job. It
was there that six years later he met his future wife.
Mr. Butler was a non-active member of the NAACP at this time, but
was encouraged by the NAACP leaders not to attend the meetings because
he would be fired. As a result of the Briggs, School Districts 4 and
22 were combined into one district, and a few select African American
students were chosen to attend the white schools. It was shortly after
this that Clarenton Hall, a private white academy, was built and the
all white Summerton High School was abandoned. In 1971 Mr. Butler became
the first African American superintendent in South Carolina. However,
after seven years he asked to be moved back to principal of the high
school so that he could get it “straightened out.” He retired
in 1984, but was elected to the county school board in 1992.
Judge Robert Carter
U.S. District Judge Robert Carter was born in Florida in 1917. He received
his bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University in 1937 and law
degrees from Howard and Columbia universities in 1940 and 1942 respectively.
Although, Mr. Carter started college with the intent of pursuing political
science, he was recruited and offered a scholarship to Howard University
Law School. While at Howard he was mentored by famed attorney Charles
Hamilton Houston and befriended by classmate Thurgood Marshall. After
receiving his law degrees he served in the Air Force during World War
II.
He was hired by Thurgood Marshall to assist the legal team of the
NAACP. During his early years with the organization he visited with
Esther Brown the Kansas women who initiated the Webb case in 1949. She
was an active member of the NAACP. He praised her for the work she did
in keeping her local chapter going. Robert Carter was assigned to assist
the Topeka NAACP attorneys with the development of their case against
the local school board regarding ending the practice of segregating
elementary school children. He worked along side Topekans Charles Bledsoe,
Charles Scott, John Scott, McKinley Burnett and Lucinda Todd.
During the Brown case, Carter traveled to Topeka on several occasions.
His role was to assist with development and agreement of the Topeka
case. As a result he appeared in Federal District Court under presiding
judge and former Kansas Governor Walter Huxman.
Mr. Carter’s career as an attorney has placed him firmly in the
history books as part of the legal team in Brown v. the Board of Education.
He was appointed to the bench for the Southern District of New York
in 1972. He is the father of two sons. One is a lawyer working for the
New York District Attorney’s Office and the other is in finance.
Judge Carter remains on the U.S. District Bench.
Geraldine Crumpler
Geraldine Crumpler was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1941, the second
of six children. Her parents were from North Carolina, but moved to
Wilmington when her father got a job with Wurtz Steel. She attended
grades 1st through 6th in a one room schoolhouse. For grades seven through
12, she went to school in Claymont. Mrs. Crumpler’s family did
not talk about the desegregation cases, and the problems in Arkansas
were the only desegregation issue she remembered. She did not know that
her father was one of the petitioners in the case so that she could
attend school at Claymont. Mrs. Crumpler had to take a city bus to attend
school at Claymont.
She had not had much contact with whites prior to this. But she did
not give it much thought; as she puts it, “You didn’t see
the color, you just went to school.” At first, during the 7th
grade, there was some name calling, but by the end of the year it had
stopped; white students were partnered up with black students, so they
got to know each other better. U.S. District Judge Robert Carter was
appointed to the bench for the Southern District of New York in 1972.
Deborah Dandridge
Born in Topeka, Kansas on November 9, 1946, Deborah L. Dandridge attended
Washington Elementary School, one of the city’s schools designated
for African Americans before the 1954 Supreme Court decision. The school
continued to maintain a predominantly African American faculty and student
population until it’s closing in the 1960’s. She was a student
at Washington School from kindergarten (1951) through the sixth grade
(1957).
Her mother, Mildred Brown Dandridge, who was also born and raised
in Topeka, owned and operated Dawn’s Beauty Shop from 1937 until
the late 1940’s. When her mother died in January of 1951, her
father, Milburn Dandridge, hired friends and relatives to take care
of her during the day while he worked at the Santa Fe Shops as a boilermaker.
With her father’s marriage to Jeanette Temple, she enjoyed the
advantages for having two parents; she graduated from Topeka Junior
High School and Topeka High School.
After having earned a B.A. degree in history from Washburn University,
she pursued graduate studies at Southern University in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. In the fall of 1968, she began attending graduate school
in Georgia at Atlanta University where she received an M.A. in history
in 1970. After serving as a full-time instructor in history at Washburn
University, she entered the Ph.D. program in history at the University
of Kansas, passed the comprehensive exams, and became a Ph.D. candidate.
She later began a career in archives and has served as the field archivist
for documenting the African American experience in the Kansas Collection
in the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas since 1986.
Deborah is a member of the Episcopal Church and the Alpha Kappa Alpha
Sorority. She still resides in Topeka.
Jeanette Dandridge
Jeanette Ruth Dandridge is the second child of Mr. John and Mrs. Pearl
Temple and the sister of James, Alberta, and Frederick. Born on February
27, 1912, she is a native Topekan who attended Monroe School, graduated
from Topeka High School, and earned a B.A. degree from Washburn University
in 1933. After acquiring several years of teaching experience at Kansas
Technical Institute, an African American vocational school located outside
the city limits of Topeka, she joined the faculty of Monroe School and
taught fourth-grade classes.
More interested in teaching on a college level, Mrs. Dandridge earned
an M.A. degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in
1942. From the 1940’s until the summer of 1953, she served on
the faculties of African American colleges, including Langston University
in Oklahoma, Barber Scotia College in North Carolina and Morgan State
College in Maryland. During this period, she also toured the South as
a concert performer in literary interpretation.
On December 28, 1952, she married Milburn Dandridge, a widower and
Topeka native who had been raising his six-year-old child, Deborah Dandridge,
by himself. From 1959 until her retirement in 1976, she served as an
instructor in the Speech Department at Washburn University. Jeanette
was a member of the Episcopal Church and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
Mrs. Dandridge passed away on April 22, 2001, in Topeka.
Maurita Davis
Maurita (Burnett) Davis was born October 8, 1923, at home at 1522 Quincy
Street, Topeka, Kansas. Her mother, Nina Jones Burnett, was born and
raised in the little town of Perry, Kansas. McKinley Burnett, her father,
hailed from Oskaloosa, a neighboring community to Perry. Her maternal
grandparents also had Kansas roots in Bonner Springs. Her paternal grandparents
were from the state of Tennessee. Maurita was one of five children.
Once the Burnett children reached school age they had only to travel
next door to the segregated Monroe Elementary School. As a consequence
they attended grades 1-8 at Monroe. Junior high schools in Topeka were
integrated for 9th grade. Topeka High School was the only facility at
that level, and except for extracurricular activities, was fully integrated.
Maurita’s father, McKinley Burnett, garnered his interest in civil
rights during military service in WWII. He insisted on being treated
fairly and was quick to protest the treatment of his fellow African
American soldiers. His commitment was further fueled by segregation
at home in Topeka. In 1948 Burnett was selected to head the Topeka Branch
of the NAACP. From that vantage point he started down a road leading
to the end of legal racial segregation. In 1948 Maurita watched her
father’s crusade on behalf of the Topeka NAACP.
For a period of two years he attempted to persuade the Topeka Board
of Education to integrate their elementary schools. Undaunted by the
board’s refusal, he decided to organize a legal challenge under
the auspices of the NAACP. He worked tirelessly to find plaintiffs.
Fortunately, chapter secretary Lucinda Todd as well as legal counsel
Charles Scott, John Scott, and Charles Bledsoe, aided him. The resulting
case became known as Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka.
Maurita’s late husband, James Parker Davis, served in the Kansas
Legislature from 1959 to 1973. He represented Kansas City, Kansas, in
Wyandotte County. Mrs. Davis still resides in Kansas City.
Joseph “Joe” Douglas
Mr. Joseph “Joe” Douglas was born on June 9, 1928, in Topeka,
Kansas, to Imogene and Joseph Douglas. Mr. Douglas attended Monroe Elementary
School from 1933 to 1939. He was a member of the only class from the
African American elementary schools that attended junior high for only
the eighth and ninth grades because of a rule change that went into
effect that put all the grade schools, African American and white, on
the same system of K-6.
Topeka Junior High was not the first time Mr. Douglas was exposed to
an integrated situation. He lived in an integrated neighborhood, where
African American, white, and Hispanic kids played together and ate at
one another’s house. However, it was the first time he encountered
an integrated education system. He strongly felt the lack of eye contact
between him, and the other African American students, and the white
teachers. It was during this time that Mr. Douglas started to feel left
out of the educational system because it did not relate to him anymore.
This feeling, along with the feeling of simply being treated unfairly
by the teachers in relation to grading, continued at Topeka High School.
Eventually this, along with a few other incidents, led him to leave
high school in 1946, his senior year, and join the military.
Mr. Douglas did not pay a great deal of attention to the Brown case,
but he was aware of who was involved with it (like the Scotts). There
was a feeling that the case would not be successful, so therefore he
did not follow it; he was unaware that similar cases had been filed
in other states. At the time that the case was filed, he had been with
the Fire Department for four years. He worked for the Topeka Fire Department
for just over 39 years; he served as the first African American city
fire chief from 1983 to 1989. He also served on the school board for
eight years.
Claude Emerson
Claude Arthur Emerson was born July 11, 1942. His only living sibling,
a brother named George, Jr., was born in 1945, also in Topeka. The family
was deeply rooted in the city since his mother Marguerite (Harrison)
Emerson was born in Topeka in 1919. His father George, Sr., was born
in Columbia, Missouri. The Emerson family found themselves involved
in a class action suit to bring about integration in Topeka’s
elementary schools. Mrs. Emerson was among the parents recruited by
NAACP secretary Lucinda Todd. This group would comprise the roster of
plaintiffs once their case was filed. The Emersons were friends with
Oliver Brown for whom their case would eventually be named. The family
lived next door to Brown’s brother.
During the NAACP’s work to organize a legal challenge, Claude
and George Emerson attended segregated Buchanan Elementary School. Had
it not been for segregation, the boys would have attended Lowman Hill,
an elementary school closer to their home. In spite of the public stance
taken by Mrs. Emerson on behalf of her children, Claude’s world
did not change. The family lived in an integrated neighborhood. Children
of all races spent their free time playing together. However, because
of school segregation policies they could not attend the same school.
By the time the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision in the Brown
case, Claude was in junior high school. Secondary schools were already
integrated.
Florence Nicholson, Claude’s wife, was born in Sabetha, Kansas,
in 1953. The couple, who were married in Topeka in 1974, has seven children.
Claude Emerson along with his wife and children still resides in Topeka.
Annie Gibson
Annie Gibson was born in 1910 or 1911 in the small farming community
of Summerton, South Carolina. The town sits in the midst of Clarendon
County, which became famous during the case of Briggs v. Elliot. This
case was filed in an attempt to integrate public schools in Clarendon
County. Like most families of Annie Gibson’s time, farming provided
both food and money for her family. Unlike many other farm families,
her father was a teacher. Her mother ran a local diner.
Annie and her three sisters all attended the segregated schools of Summerton.
The community operated two elementary schools for African American children,
St. Paul and Spring Hill. Scotts Branch was their segregated high school.
At the time Annie Gibson attended school, high school ended with 10th
grade. Although she wanted to become a teacher, she never pursued a
college education.
Annie married a local man in 1935. They began living on the farm her
husband had lived on since he was born. His family had been tenant farmers.
Unfortunately, once Annie agreed to participate in the movement to integrate
the county’s public schools, her family was evicted from the land.
Mrs. Gibson never wavered and remained committed to the goal of better
education for their children. This public stand resulted in the family
having to rent a smaller farm that faltered because white business owners
refused to extend credit to Mr. Gibson. Annie herself was fired from
her job as a maid at a local motel. The pressure applied throughout
the community made it impossible for the Gibson’s to find work.
Annie Gibson supported Rev. J. A. DeLaine in his mission to improve
the plight of African American people. Her determination to participate
in the case of Briggs v. Elliot was firmly in place. She wanted her
children to have classrooms with desks and up-to-date educational resources.
She wanted a bus for other African American children who walked great
distances to school. Staying the course along with numerous fellow plaintiffs
ultimately paid off. Their case became part of the U.S. Supreme Court
decision to end segregated schools. Mrs. Gibson still resides in Clarendon
County, South Carolina.
Barbara Gibson
Barbara (Caldwell) Gibson was born in Topeka, Kansas, on December 21,
1995. Her parents are Margerite Mallory and Hiram O’Neal (Neal)
Caldwell. Mrs. Caldwell was born in Topeka, while her husband Hiram
was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her family attended church at St. Johns’
AME. She met her late husband, William Gibson, in Washington, D.C.;
they were married on November 28, 1958, in Washington. Mr. Gibson was
born in Toledo, Ohio.
Mrs. Gibson attended Monroe Elementary School and Crane Junior High;
she also went to Topeka High School. During school, she wrote for the
school paper. After a semester at Washburn, she transferred to Howard
University where she majored in math and German.
One of Mrs. Gibson’s favorite hobbies is tennis, although she
just watches it now instead of actually playing. She also enjoys reading
and bowling. Her first job after leaving Howard University was helping
with the 1950 Census. Later she worked in statistics for the Department
of the Army. She was really excited when she was asked to work at the
David Taylor Model Basin in the new Applied Mathematics Laboratory.
George Goebel
Mr. George Goebel grew up in Western Kansas. From 1934 to 1936 he attended
Kansas State Teacher’s College of Emporia (now Emporia State University),
but due to difficulties caused by the Depression, he returned to where
he grew up to teach. He taught in both Jetmore and Hanston, Kansas.
After serving in the military during the war, Mr. Goebel finished his
teaching degree at Kansas State Teacher’s College and moved to
Topeka, with his wife, to teach the 5th grade.
In 1951 he took the job as principal at Quinton Heights and taught both
the 5th and the 6th grade for part of the day. Mr. Goebel recalls seeing
African American student going past his school on their way to Monroe.
Mr. Goebel recalls that the first African American teacher hired to
teach at Quinton Heights was very uncomfortable there. He tried to draw
her out, include her in things, and spoke with her during evaluations
about what he could do to make it easier for her, but she was just not
comfortable with the situation. Other African American teachers seemed
to have an easier time of fitting in at Quinton.
The antagonistic attitudes of some of the students seemed to be influenced
by their parents, but mostly things went relatively smoothly, after
a period of adjustment, given that everyone lived in the same general
area. He is very proud of all of his students; he recalls two who went
on to become prominent dentists in the area, and the successes of Sharon
Woodson and Wanda Scott.
Jack Greenberg
Jack Greenberg was born into a family that placed high value on education.
He spent his childhood in a Bronx, New York, neighborhood of Irish and
Jewish families. Jack attended PS 56 Elementary School and graduated
from DeWitt Clinton High. His parents inculcated him with an abiding
concern for others. At an early age Jack was involved in efforts to
help those less fortunate. Bertha Rosenberg, his mother, came to America
from Romania. His father was born in Poland. Both Jack and his brother
Daniel were influenced by their parents’ belief that education
and caring about the work you choose were fundamental elements of a
successful life.
Jack went on to study Chinese culture at Columbia University, became
a civil rights lawyer in 1949, and pursued his interest in international
human rights in the 1960s. He was one of the founders of the Mexican
American Legal Defense and Education Fund and attempted to set up a
similar organization for Native Americans. He also created the first
private national poverty law program (National Office for the Rights
of the Indigent). His brother Daniel became the first journalist to
specialize in the politics of science. Jack served in the military during
World War II. The Navy sent him to Cornell University as part of officer
training. While at Cornell, he developed an interest in the law. He
spent his tour of duty as a naval officer.
Jack Greenberg began his career with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in
1949 at the age of 24. During his tenure there, he litigated numerous
school cases, voting rights cases, and won the legal right for Martin
Luther King, Jr., to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
He was part of the legal team in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision
in Brown v. Board of Education.
From 1961-1984 Jack served as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund director-counsel;
he succeeded Thurgood Marshall. From 1989 to 1993 he served as dean
of Columbia College and is currently a professor with Columbia Law School.
L. L. Hall
Mr. L. L. Hall was born in Ahoskie, North Carolina; when he was six
years old, his family finally settled in Portsmouth, Virginia. His father
worked in the Norfolk navy yard during World War II.
Mr. Hall finished his elementary education in Portsmouth and attended
Longwood Industrial School (now St. Paul College) before going to New
York University for a year. He started his career in physical education,
but decided he did not want to coach. In 1946 he received a bachelors
degree in education from Virginia State University in Petersburg. During
his career in Farmville, he was a coach, a teacher, and a principal.
One of Mr. Hall’s responsibilities as principal was the mapping
of the school bus routes for the county. He was a principal from 1943
to July 1, 1959, when the schools were closed down.
In Farmville, the county school board, except for the private white
academy, controlled the schools. Although the schools were segregated,
there was only the one school board and one superintendent. The African
American schools had to supply their own equipment and textbooks, although
they usually got "hand-me-downs” from the white schools whenever
they would get new equipment and books.
Chris Hansen
Chris Hansen was born on October 18, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. His
father was a financial analyst and his mother was a homemaker. The family
included Chris and his two sisters. In 1969 he received a bachelor’s
degree from Carlton College and pursued a childhood dream of becoming
an attorney. By 1972 he received his law degree from the University
of Chicago. Chris began his career working as an attorney for the Legal
Aid Society of New York City.
He was responsible for criminal defense cases. In 1973, after one year
with Legal Aid, he joined the staff of the American Civil Liberties
Union. His primary assignment was mental health litigation. In 1984
he was assigned to the reopened case of Brown v. the Board of Education,
which was focusing on whether or not Topeka Public Schools had, in fact,
ever complied with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
When Chris Hansen joined the local legal team working on this case,
he replaced fellow ACLU attorney Richard Larsen. The substitution was
made because Larsen’s caseload limited the time he could devote
to the Topeka litigation. After two years of preparation the case was
heard in Federal District Court, in October of 1986. Four years later
in October of 1992, the Federal Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the
petitioners, stating that Topeka Public Schools did in fact have facilities
that were racially identifiable and as a result the school board must
develop a plan for remedy. The school district complied by constructing
magnet schools and has since been granted unitary status. During the
court proceeding, Chris lived in Topeka for one month. He is still with
the ACLU and resides in New York.
Cheryl Brown Henderson
Cheryl Brown was born December 20, 1950, in Topeka, Kansas. The family
included two other girls: Linda, born in 1942, and Terry, born in 1947.
Her mother Leola was born in Marvel, Arkansas, and moved to Topeka when
she was two years old. Her father Oliver was a Topeka native. In 1950
the Brown family found themselves involved in a class action suit to
bring about integration in Topeka’s elementary schools. Mr. Brown
was among the parents recruited by NAACP attorney Charles Scott. This
group would comprise the roster of plaintiffs once their case was filed.
In 1953 Oliver Brown became the pastor of St. Mark’s AME Church,
and the family moved to another integrated neighborhood, this one in
North Topeka. One year later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the NAACP
case named for Oliver Brown. In the fall of 1955 Cheryl began school
in the newly integrated elementary system of Topeka; she attended Grant
Elementary. In 1959 Rev. Oliver Brown was assigned to Benton Ave AME
Church in Springfield, Missouri, where Cheryl attended Boyd Elementary
School. Her father died in June of 1961 and Mrs. Brown moved the family
back to Topeka.
In 1961 Cheryl attended 6th grade at Sumner Elementary School. She graduated
from Roosevelt Junior High in 1965, attended Topeka High School her
sophomore year, and graduated from Highland Park in 1968. Cheryl received
a B.A. degree in education from Baker University in 1972 and an M.S.
in Counseling from Emporia Kansas State College (now Emporia State University)
in 1976. She married Larry Henderson on August 5, 1972.
After serving as a classroom teacher and a guidance counselor, she joined
the administrative staff of the Kansas State Department of Education.
In 1988 she, along with a co-worker, established the Brown Foundation
for Educational Equity, Excellence, and Research. In 1990 she successfully
worked with Congress and the Department of Interior to establish the
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. She serves on various
national, state, and local boards and is a member of the Alpha Kappa
Alpha Sorority. Cheryl still resides in Topeka, along with her husband,
son, her mother, and sisters.
Zelma Henderson
Zelma Henderson is listed among the thirteen parent plaintiffs in the
Brown decision. As a case petitioner she is noted as Mrs. Andrew Henderson.
Zelma was born in Colby, Kansas, a small town 60 miles from the Colorado
border. Her date of birth is February 29, 1920. Her parents were also
born in small Kansas towns. Her father Thomas Hurst started life in
Ozawkie, and her mother Bansy Belle Hurst in Oskaloosa, both communities
are located just north of Topeka. Her parents married and moved to Kansas
City where the first three of their five children were born. Her father
left his job at a Kansas City packinghouse to move his family to Oakley,
Kansas, near Colby. His plan was to homestead and farm. Two more children
were born including Zelma.
The Hurst children attended integrated rural schools through high school.
For most of that time they were the only African American family in
the county. When Zelma Hurst graduated from Oakley High School in 1940,
she moved to Topeka to find work and attend the Kansas Vocational School
at Topeka, a segregated training school for African Americans. Not many
years after arriving in Topeka she married Andrew Henderson and completed
cosmetology training. She quickly became an entrepreneur opening a beauty
salon in her home. Her aspirations were fueled by the discrimination
present in the Topeka job market. Zelma had been an AA” student
with excellent typing skills, but when she applied for clerical work
she was always, turned down and offered domestic work instead.
Now as Mrs. Andrew Henderson, she continued to be active in her church,
St. John AME, other and civic endeavors. Two years after their 1943
marriage, the Hendersons started a family with the birth of daughter
Vicky, followed later by son Donald. Having grown up in a small community
where schools were integrated Mrs. Henderson was not keen on the idea
of her children being forced to attend a certain school based solely
on race. She and her husband, who worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber
Co., provided a good life for their family. It did not take her long
to agree to become a plaintiff in the NAACP case to challenge segregated
schools. She was asked to join the effort by the Charles and John Scott.
In addition, the NAACP President, McKinley Burnett, had been a long
time family friend. Mrs. Henderson shared the growing concern about
the African American schools not always receiving up to date textbooks;
she also did not want her children being separated from other children.
Zelma Henderson and her son Donald still live in Topeka. Her husband
Andrew and daughter Vicky are both deceased.
Barbara Henry
Barbara Henry was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1947. Her mother
came to Delaware from Florida to attend college, and her father also
came from there in search of his brother and work after an incident
on his job in Florida. Her family lived in the Hickman Road housing
development that was built to house the African American workers at
Worth Steel.
Ms. Henry attended State Line Grade School. She has very fond memories
of Mrs. Dyson and the overall atmosphere there. It was in sixth grade
that she first went to Claymont High. Ms. Henry did not feel that the
transition from a one-room school to Claymont was difficult because
of the sense of love and security that was provided by Mrs. Dyson and
her parents. She felt that the African American boys had a harder time
with the teachers, and others at school, than the girls did. There were
no African American teachers while she was at Claymont.
Ms. Henry recalls being discouraged from taking college-prep classes
and directed towards business courses so she could work in secretarial
positions. She went to Delaware State College (Now Delaware State University),
which was an African American college, but she really wanted to go to
the University of Delaware. What Ms. Henry really wanted was to be a
teacher, but at the time she did not realize that UD was integrated.
Rev. E. B. Hicks
Reverend Elder Barney (E. B.) Hicks was born to Daniel Henry and Carrie
Smith Hick on July 11, 1907, in Wichita, Kansas, the youngest of five
children. After his mother’s death, when he was three, he moved
to Topeka with his sister, one brother, his aunt, and his maternal grandmother,
although he was primarily raised by his aunt and uncle. They lived in
an integrated neighborhood.
Rev. Hicks attended McKinley Grade School, Quincy Junior High, and Topeka
High. He recalls wondering why he had to walk past other schools that
were four or five blocks away to get to McKinley, which was twelve blocks
from his house. After two years at Topeka High, Rev. Hicks dropped out
to help support the family after his uncle came down with rheumatism.
However, he was able to continue his education later, through night
school, and ended up receiving four degrees.
Rev. Hicks severed as a First Lieutenant in the army Chaplain Corps
during World War II. He served at several different posts throughout
the United States during the war. His involvement in the Brown case
was through the alliance of African American pastors from the Interdenominational
Ministries; his actual involvement came about because somehow his name
came to be in a newspaper ad against the Board of Education.
Rev. Hick married his first wife, Effie Mae, in 1927. She passed away
in 1960. He remarried on October 10, 1961, in Grahm County, Kansas.
His second wife was Roena Sayers. Rev. Hicks had four children: three
sons and a daughter. Rev. Hicks passed away in August of 1992.
Charles Hill
Mr. Charles Hill was born in July of 1937 in Wilmington, Delaware. Before
working as the community and school nurse in Claymont, his mother was
the private duty nurse for the duPont family. His father worked in the
wholesale food business. When Mr. Hill started at Claymont School, it
contained grades K-12, with two classes for each grade. The school had
tremendous community support and involvement. It served as a focal point
in the community; Claymont was unincorporated so there was no town hall
or other place to gather.
He was unaware that some African American students tried to enroll at
Claymont in 1951; he does not recall there being anything in the paper
about it. When school started in the fall of 1952, the students were
told that African American students would be attending school at Hickman
Road. Mr. Hill felt that the students just accepted this; the incidents
of name calling, and the like, seemed to be under circumstances that
mostly any kid would do so on any day. During the elementary grades
they would go to the State Line School and students there would go to
Claymont on occasion, so they had been around each other before. Mr.
Hill felt that it was Mr. Stall’s reputation and the "Red
Hummer” (his paddle) that kept things from getting out of hand
with those students who would have been more active and vocal in their
dislike of attending school with the African American students. It was
later that they learned that Mr. Stall, the school superintendent, had
allowed this despite the State Board of Education ordering him not to.
Mr. Hill had not thought much about Claymont’s role in the Brown
case until years later when an article appeared in Life Magazine, when
he and a student he helped through nursing school talked about it some
(he started a scholarship at Claymont in his mother’s name) and
when Claymont was closed between1990 and 1991. Over the years, he slowly
began to realize that something more significant had happened there
than anyone thought at that time.
Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill was born May 1, 1907, in Richmond, Virginia. During his
childhood the family lived in Roanoke, where Oliver attended elementary
school. By the time he reached age twelve, formal education for African
Americans had been extended beyond 7th grade. He was among the first
group to attend the newly established 8th & 9th grade classes. His
mother, and by then stepfather, moved the family to Washington, D.C.
It was there that Oliver Hill completed high school.
According to Hill, the turning point in his life came by way of an uncle
who died and left him an annotated copy of the U.S. Constitution. It
was the receipt of this document that resulted in his interest in the
law, and he decided to become a lawyer. While he was working on an undergraduate
degree at Howard University, the school itself was undergoing a major
change. University President Dr. Mordicia Johnson was determined to
make Howard’s fledgling law school into a first class program.
He began by hiring the scholarly and ambitious Charles Hamilton Houston,
a recent Harvard Law School graduate. Houston was to be both the dean
of the Law School and one of its prominent professors. When Oliver Hill
applied to Howard’s Law School, it was fast becoming, for African
Americans, the best in the nation. He and Thurgood Marshall were classmates.
After graduation he passed the Virginia Bar exam. However, several years
passed before he began practicing law in Virginia.
After serving in the Army during World War II, he returned to Richmond
and immediately became involved in cases to equalize teachers’
salaries. In addition, the firm Hill was now employed by had taken on
a school integration case in Montgomery County. It was during this time
that he received a call from sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns explaining
that students in Farmville, Virginia, were staging a strike for better
schools; they needed his help. Oliver Hill was persuaded to assist the
striking students. His actions ultimately led to the case of Davis v.
Prince Edward County School Board. Oliver Hill still resides in Richmond,
Virginia.
Christina Jackson
Christina Jackson was born on August 15, 1926 in Topeka, Kansas. Her
parents were Georgia and Jess Edwards. She only attended school through
the 11th grade, having dropped out to get married, but received various
kinds of training through her positions as a volunteer coordinator and
a receptionist for the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles. Over the
years she has been involved in numerous community activities and programs.
She and her husband Enoch have eight children.
Mrs. Jackson attended Washington Grade School, East Topeka Junior High,
and Topeka High School. The thing that stands out the most in her mind
about Washington was the music; every morning, at a certain time, principal
Ridley would lead the whole school in singing "Lift Every Voice
and Sing.” The school also had a Health Room where some students
were served breakfast. Ms. Jackson also recalls the fact that the teachers
there were very strict; students did not get away with talking back
to the teachers. Even her children, who attended Monroe School and were
then transferred to State Street School, recalled being surprised by
students being allowed to talk back to the teachers. She also remembers
the stressing of African American History at Washington, and the other
African American schools, by Mr. Ridley.
The Brown case impacted Mrs. Jackson’s children. They started
out attending Monroe School, but after the case, they were transferred
to State Street School. She recalls that the faculty at the school really
tried to integrate the students; they were generally accepted, and the
students were told how to behave towards one another. Not having to
bundle up her kids and walk them down to the bus in the freezing cold
was the best thing that resulted from the case as far as she was concerned;
the white schools were not. Children felt that they were treated better
at State Street than they were later on at Holliday Junior High. This
was not necessarily better to her, but it was closer to where she lived.
She partly attributed this to the fact that the kids at State Street
knew her children from the neighborhood. It was at Holliday that Mrs.
Jackson’s children ran into problems with instances of name-calling
and such.
Eugene Johnson
Mr. Eugene Johnson was born on October 15, 1920, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He moved to Topeka with his aunt and great-aunt when he was just three-years-old.
At that time his mother, Theota Lee Johnson, was attending the normal
school in Topeka. Mr. Johnson married Charline Hoard on September 22,
1952, in Lawrence, Kansas.
Mr. Johnson attended Monroe Grade School, Crane Junior High, and Topeka
High School. In 1925 he started attending Monroe. At that time it was
the old two-story building. It was in 1926 that the Monroe School that
people are more familiar with was built. To help prepare the students
for the integrated setting at Crane Junior High, special teachers were
brought in once a month to help with penmanship, music, and drawing.
The hardest thing to adjust to at Crane for Mr. Johnson was the fact
that students had a homeroom, but other than that, students went from
classroom to classroom. The athletic teams were integrated, unlike at
the high school level. Topeka High was a lot larger than the students
coming from Monroe had imagined. There were no African American teachers
at Topeka High at this time. While the school choir was integrated,
the sports teams were not, except for tack. However, the intramural
teams were integrated, so that is how many of the African American students
got to play football against some of the white students.
The Booker T. Washington Club there was a type of Asocial club”
for the male African American students at Topeka High. There were separate
dances (prom, etc.) for the white and African American students. Mr.
Johnson remained active in the Boy Scouts during high school; the scouts
gave out baskets during the Depression. The Gay Knights was a group
of African American guys who hung out together. The group was made up
of Mr. Johnson, Charles Scott, and some guys from Tennessee Town, as
well as a few guys from other parts of Topeka. This was the "in”
group; they had parties and even had a sister club, the Stella Puellas.
The Bachelor Boys were a group of older guys who formed around the same
time as the Gay Knights. Other clubs included the Owl Club and the Pleasure
Mirrors.
In 1938, he dropped out of high school after his junior year to go through
the conservation course before enlisting in the army. When he returned
to Topeka, after leaving the army in 1945, he passed the equivalency
test for high school and started working at his aunt’s restaurant,
Jean’s Sandwich Shop. In 1947 he started working as a reliever
at the Motive Power Building at Santa Fe. He joined the Army Reserves
and reenlisted in September of 1950, but was discharged in August of
1951.
The "Back Home Reunion” was co-founded by Eugene Johnson,
along with Charles Scott and Carl Williams. It’s an attempt to
reunite former classmates from the four African American grade schools.
They started out meeting every two years, but moved it back to every
three years to make it easier to organize and for people to come.
Lois Johnson
Lois Johnson was born in Hockessin, Delaware, in 1940, the third of
eight children. She was born in the house next door to the one where
she currently lives. At the age of six she started attending school
at Hockessin School 107; the school was about two blocks away from her
home. She has very fond memories of the school and its teachers. The
children usually went home for lunch, and there was a nice playground,
even though there was not a lot of equipment for the children to play
on. Ms. Johnson was aware of the Bulah v. Gebhart case, but did not
pay much attention to it at first. However, she did know Shirley Barbara
from school and church.
Ms. Johnson started attending Howard High School in 1954 or 1955, after
it had been integrated. Her mother prepared her for this by telling
her about the case and what had happened to some of the children who
went there. She was reluctant to go; she did not grasp what integration
was since she played with white, African American, and Latino children.
However, the white children she played with at home did treat her differently
at school. The principal, who was also one of Ms. Johnson’s teachers,
read a note in class from the mother of one of the white children saying
she did not want her child going to school with African American children.
This really hurt her because she played with this woman’s child
and did not realize that she felt this way.
Katherine A. King
Katherine A. King was born in Topeka, Kansas, the oldest of a family
that included one brother and four sisters. Her mother Bessie Hicks
King was born in Tonganoxie, Kansas, one of twenty-six children. She
died on March 10, 1966, and is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery along with
her husband who died on November 3, 1957. Her father, Richard Leonard
King, was born in the farming community of Neely, Kansas; the town is
now defunct.
Katherine began her formal education at Clay School. This was an all
white school, except for her family. In sixth grade she was transferred
to Buchanan Elementary, a segregated school for African American children.
She graduated from Topeka High School and received her B.A. Degree from
Washburn University, a master’s from the University of Kansas,
and engaged in postgraduate study at Emporia State and Colorado State
Universities.
Ms. King began her teaching career in a one-room school in Hugoton,
Kansas, where she was responsible for all elementary grades. She distinguished
herself while teaching in Topeka by serving as a building representative,
on teacher salary committees, textbook committees, and in extra curricular
leadership with the Girl Scouts and Audubon Society. When she retired,
she had been a teacher for 44 years. Katherine King still resides in
Topeka.
John Land III
Mr. John Land III was born in Manning, South Carolina, in 1942. He has
been practicing law in Manning since March of 1968, and since 1976 he
has been serving in the state Senate continuously. His district is 65%
African American and 35% white.
During the time that Mr. Land was going to school, the schools were
fully segregated. He attended Manning High School while African American
students went to Manning Training School. He was away at college during
the period of the Briggs case and, later on, the Brown case. However,
he does remember the controversies that presided the Briggs case, due
in part to the fact that his father’s service station had a large
African American clientele. Both his father and his uncle continued
to extend credit to their African American clients during the period
leading to and including the Briggs case, even though their white counterparts
had not done so.
Rev. Maurice Lang, III
Rev. Maurice Lang, III, a native of Topeka, was born on June 29, 1928.
His mother, Ruth Sterling was born in 1914; she passed away in 1945
and is buried in Topeka. Maurice Lang, his father, was born in Topeka.
He died in 1945, and is also buried in Topeka. There were four other
children in the family besides Maurice, III.
Although his family lived in integrated neighborhoods, he attended segregated
schools for white children. As a child Maurice was a student at Sumner
and later Grant Elementary Schools. It was not until he enrolled at
Topeka High that he experienced integrated schooling. After high school
he attended Bible College in Los Angeles, California. He returned to
Kansas and married a local girl \by the name of Opal. His new family
grew to include four children.
He began his career with an unsuccessful attempt to organize an African
American branch of the Four Square Gospel Church. He eventually became
good friends with fellow Minister Rev. Oliver Brown and his family.
In the late 1950’s he served as Assistant Pastor of St. Mark’s
AME Church, working along side Rev. Brown. In 1959 the AME Church reassigned
both men. Rev. Lang became the first white pastor of an AME congregation
in Manhattan, Kansas. Rev. Brown was assigned to Benton Avenue AME Church
in Springfield, Missouri.
In 1961 Rev. Brown brought his family to Topeka to visit relatives.
Because church business required him to return to Missouri, he asked
Rev. Lang to accompany him on the trip. After several days while in
route to pick up his family in Topeka, Rev. Brown became gravely ill
resulting in his death. It was his friend Maurice who was with him in
his final hours at St. Francis Hospital. Maurice Lang has encountered
two historic figures in his life. In the 1950s he met and talked with
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and became very close friends with Rev. Oliver
Brown. Rev. Maurice Lang still resides in Topeka.
Henry Lawson
Mr. Henry Lawson was born on August 31, 1929, in Crawford County, South
Carolina. He has lived in that area for all of his life. His father
was a sharecropper of sorts. The school term was only seven months long
and centered around the agricultural crops. Mr. Lawson helped his father
in the field after school, and along with his mother and other siblings,
during harvest time. When he started school, he attended Scotch Branch
School. That was not the original name of the school, but the name given
to the new school that was built after the other one burned down when
Mr. Lawson was in the second grade. The new school was a wood building
without insulation and electricity until Mr. Lawson was in the 5th grade.
For 1st grade through 6th, there was one room per grade; for grades
7th through 10th (high school went up to the 10th grade) the classes
were combined two grades per room.
Mr. McCord was the county superintendent over the African American and
white schools at this time. The students had desks and textbooks that
were "hand-me-downs” from white schools. The school did not
provide some textbooks, and the students had to provide their own pencils
and paper, which meant that some had to borrow from others since this
was during the Depression. They had a dirt basketball court; there was
no gym.
Mr. Lawson was aware of the Briggs case. He was invited to attend a
meeting that was called for by the students at Scotch Branch. They had
gone to the principal over their concerns about the textbooks and other
things in the school. They were told if they did not leave his office,
their transcripts, and therefore their ability to graduate, would be
affected. It was a result of this that the parents bought a school bus
and asked the school district to help keep the bus up and running. It
was sometime after the district’s refusal to help fund the school
bus that the NAACP became involved and filed the suit.
Clara Ligon
Clara Ligon was born in Prospect, Virginia, and spent part of her childhood
in Sorrow, Pennsylvania. Her parents separated resulting in a move back
to Virginia for Clara and her mother. They settled in Prince Edward
County just outside of Farmville.
Her mother sent Clara to live with her aunt in Bedford, Virginia, so
she would not have to attend the rural one-room school in the county.
After finishing the eighth grade she returned and joined the student
body of Morton High School, the only segregated secondary school in
the area.
Her high school years were uneventful because she lived 22 miles from
town; it was difficult to participate in extra curricular activities.
During her freshman and sophomore years she walked to school. Finally
through the efforts of the African American community leaders a school
bus made available and Clara’s trip to school became easier. Clara
graduated in 1947 before the infamous student strike, which led to the
school integration case of Davis vs. Prince Edward County.
Dr. Ernest Manheim
Dr. Ernest Manheim was born in Hungary to a Hungarian father and an
Austrian mother on January 27, 1900. Hermine Wengraf, his mother died
in 1950 and is buried in Budapest. His father, Joseph Manheim was born
in Zenta (formerly part of Hungary). Mr. Manheim died in 1925 and is
also buried in Budapest. Dr. Manheim had a sister, Marguarie, who passed
away in 1968. His wife, Sheelagh, was born in British Columbia, Canada,
on November 14, 1943. The couple was married in Kansas City, Kansas,
and has two daughters.
Dr. Manheim studied sociology in Hungary, Austria, Germany, and in London,
England. He moved to the United States in 1937 to study at the University
of Chicago. His interest in sociology stems from his feeling that the
Austrian monarchy was natural and divine and had always existed, so
that when it was dissolved, he wanted to find out more about its background
which history did not explain. Dr. Manheim first experience with class
distance between African Americans and whites was in 1937 when he invited
members of a synagogue near Chicago to his house, and only the white
members showed up. The African American graduate students told him that
they knew that his invitation did not really include them.
Dr. Manheim moved to Kansas City in 1938 because he saw it as having
a typical American community that was not too big or too small. The
president of Kansas City University (KCU), now the University of Missouri-Kansas
City (UMKC), let him have a free hand in choosing what direction his
department would take academically with the curriculum. When he started
at the university, there were no African American students enrolled.
The first African American was admitted to the Law School after applying
a second time. Slowly more African American students were admitted without
resistance from white students or the faculty. The fact that there were
African American students enrolled at KCU was kept out of the papers
for three years, so that by the time the news was released, it was already
an accepted fact.
Dr. Hugh Speer, then dean of student education at KCU, asked Dr. Manheim
to testify on behalf of the Browns. The decision, he felt, was based
on what the Supreme Court and lower courts found to be true rather than
on his testimony. He also felt that the decision was inevitable because
of the changing social and economic situations in the United States.
Dr. Manheim continued to teach at KCU and UMKC until 1968. He still
considers Kansas City his home even though he has taught elsewhere since
then.
Clementine Martin
Mrs. Clementine Martin was born in Newton, Kansas, on September 7, 1910.
Her parents were Eva (Bradshaw) and C. James Phelps. Her mother, who
died on May 5, 1970, was born near Larned, Kansas; she is buried in
Topeka. Her father was born in Columbus, Kansas. He passed away on February
22, 1937, and is buried in Springfield, Missouri. Clementine Martin
was the oldest of three children. Her maternal grandmother’s family
was homesteaders in Jetmore, Kansas; one of her grandfathers was a justice
of the peace in Emporia, Kansas.
Mrs. Martin’s father worked for the Santa Fe and Frisco Railroads
as a cook. As a result, she attended grade school in Chilicothe, Illinois,
as well as in St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri. She attended high
school at Sumner High School in St. Louis, and briefly in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
before the family moved back to Springfield, Missouri, where she attended
Lincoln High School. It was not until she went into the St. Louis school
system that Mrs. Martin attended a segregated school. In Springfield
the family lived in an integrated neighborhood, but the children attended
segregated schools there as well. Public facilities and businesses were
also segregated.
Mrs. Martin went to Washburn University for a year before leaving college
to marring Eugene Martin; she met her husband at a party on the campus
of the University of Kansas. Mr. Martin was born on October 11, 1911,
in Topeka. His father, T. P. Martin was a doctor who shared an office
with another doctor on the corner of Fourth Street and Kansas Ave. Mr.
Martin was one of a hand-full of nonwhite (mostly African American)
policemen that worked for the city of Topeka. The couple was married
in Topeka on August 25, 1939. Mr. Martin passed away in November 1949.
The couple’s daughter, Eva Louise Blythe of Kansas City, Kansas,
was born in January 1950.
Mrs. Martin remembers how things opened up for African Americans after
World War II, but it really was not until the mid to early 1950s (after
her husband’s death) that things began to open up on a larger
scale. Mrs. Martin was unable to join any civil rights organizations
early on since her husband worked for the city. The Martins were not
directly involved in the Brown case because their daughter had not started
attending school at the time the case was filed. Mrs. Martin is a long
time member of the Kansas Association of Colored Women. She also belongs
to the American Legion Auxiliary.
Connie Menninger
Connie Menninger was born on November 10, 1931, in Newton, Massachusetts,
to Marian (Prince) and Henry Libbey. Mrs. Libbey passed away on May
14, 1974, in Delray Beach, Florida. Mr. Libbey died on June 16, 1984,
also in Delray Beach; both are buried there. Mrs. Menninger has one
brother, John Libbey. She married Dr. William W. Menninger on June 15,
1953, in Palo Alto, California. The couple met while students at Stanford
University; they were both working for the student newspaper, The Stanford
Daily. The couple has six children.
The couple moved to New York so that Mr. Menninger could attend Cornell
University Medical School. While in New York, Mrs. Menninger worked
as a TV program analyst for NBC until she became pregnant with the couple’s
first child. While at NBC, she covered what the network broadcasted
on the U. S. Supreme Court’s Brown decision. She did not return
to the workforce until 1976 when her youngest child was in the third
grade; she worked as an administrator for St. Francis Hospital’s
Robert Wood Johnson grant program. Mrs. Menninger left that position
after four years.
The Menningers’ children attended Randolph Elementary School which
was predominantly white, as well as Boswell Junior High and Topeka High
School, which were more diversified. In 1983 Mrs. Menninger entered
the University of Kansas Master’s of Museum Studies graduate program;
she received her degree in 1985. She started working for the Kansas
State Historical Society in the summer of 1983 as an intern, primarily
working with the manuscript collections, and currently handles reference
requests concerning the Santa Fe Railway collection.
Mrs. Menninger was elected to the Topeka Board of Education in 1969.
She was aware that there were no women or other minorities on the board
at that time; the last woman to serve on the board was 12 years prior
to that. She ran because she wanted to be more involved with what the
schools were doing; she felt that would benefit her six children. She
made a point of visiting every school in Topeka; no one had done that
for years. Mrs. Menninger also served on the Kansas Committee for the
U.S. commission on Civil Rights. The Menningers still resides in Topeka.
William Mitchell, Jr.
William Mitchell, Jr. was born in Perry, Oklahoma, on June 21, 1913.
The family moved to Topeka, Kansas, in 1915. His mother, Vivian (Anderson)
Mitchell, was born in Waco, Texas. Mrs. Mitchell died in 1968, and is
buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka. W. A. Mitchell, William’s
father, was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. He died on June 2, 1953; he
is also buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka. William Mitchell has
five brothers and sisters. His grandfather was a Methodist minister
in St. Joseph, Missouri, but he was originally from Oklahoma.
Mr. Mitchell attended Washington and Sumner Elementary Schools; he attended
Sumner before it became an all white grade school and he was transferred
to Buchanan Elementary School. He attended Crane Junior High and dropped
out of high school in the tenth grade; he began selling newspapers on
Kansas Avenue. Later he shined shoes in a place that was a shining parlor
and a dry cleaner. While working there he learned how to operate a clothing
press. At the same time, he waited tables at the Jayhawk and Kansas
Hotel on a part-time basis and at the Women’s Club when he could.
Mr. Mitchell enlisted in the army; in 1933 he went to Civilian Conservation
Corps Camp at Fort Riley on Camp Funston. He married Lucille Mitchell
on March 19, 1937, at Antioch Baptist Church in Topeka. Mrs. Mitchell
was born in Wewoka, Oklahoma. She died on October 6, 1983, and is buried
at Topeka Cemetery.
Mr. Mitchell belongs to the American Legion, the Elks, and is a Mason,
as well as, being a member of the Antioch Baptist Church. In past years
his favorite hobby was playing pool. He still lives in Topeka.
Leola (Williams) Brown
Montgomery
Leola Williams was born May 7, 1921 in Marvel, Arkansas. Her parents,
Carrie and Edward Williams, were sharecroppers. They had moved to Arkansas
from the Delta region of Mississippi. In 1923 the family, which included
Leola and her older brother Robert, relocated to Topeka, Kansas. Mr.
Williams moved the family on the advice of his brother who was living
in the city and working for the Santa Fe Railway. Mr. Williams was hired
by Santa Fe and the family began a new life.
Leola and her brother attended Monroe Elementary, a segregated school
for African American Children, and Lincoln Junior High for 9th grade.
She graduated from Topeka High School in 1939, where she was inducted
into the National Honor Society and was elected All School Queen by
the African American Students. Although junior and senior high schools
were integrated extra curricular activities were segregated. August
16, 1939, she married her high school sweetheart, Oliver Leon Brown.
Leola was eighteen and Oliver, born August 2, 1918, was twenty-one.
Three years later the couple started a family; on February 20, 1942,
their first daughter Linda, was born. In 1947 they had a second daughter,
Terry, and in 1950 a third daughter, Cheryl.
In the summer of 1950 Oliver Brown agreed to participate in a Topeka
NAACP plan to integrate public elementary schools. He joined with twelve
other parents who would become plaintiffs in a class action suit against
the Topeka Board of Education. Charles Scott, one of the local NAACP
attorneys, was a friend of the Brown family and convinced Oliver to
participate. In February when the case was filed, it was ironically
named for Oliver Brown, principally because he was the only male among
the parent plaintiffs. Leola had just given birth in December, to their
third child and could not participate. As a result the Topeka NAACP
school integration case was called Oliver L. Brown, et. al., v. the
Board of Education.
In 1953 Oliver Brown became the pastor of St. Mark’s AME Church.
In 1959 the family was moved to Springfield, Missouri, where Brown was
the pastor at the Benton Avenue AME Church. Leola remained a homemaker
until Oliver’s death from a heart attack in 1961, after which
Leola moved her family back to Topeka. She worked part-time for nine
years at J.C. Penny Co. and moved onto thirteen years at Merchants National
Bank. She remarried in 1973. Her second husband, Thirkield Montgomery,
died in 1993. She retired at age sixty-three and still resides in Topeka
along with her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Judge Constance Baker Motley
Judge Constance Motley was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut,
near Yale University; everyone she knew worked at Yale. She decided
to become a lawyer because she knew of only two African American women
lawyers, yet there were other female professionals. The U.S. Supreme
Court’s ruling in the Gains case in 1938 also influenced her.
It made her realize that if you were a lawyer you could do something
about discrimination.
Judge Motley was a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team; she
worked on one of the four other school segregation cases that were being
tried around the same time that the Brown case was being tried in Topeka.
She started working as a law clerk for the Legal Defense Fund in October
1945 while a senior at Columbia Law School. She continued working there
after she passed the bar. While there she got to argue cases at the
court of appeals level as well as in front of the U. S. Supreme Court.
She felt that this is experience she would not have gotten working at
a law firm.
Judge Motley recalls seeing very few women lawyers during her time
at the Legal Defense Fund. She tried cases in 11 southern states and
Washington, D.C., but remembers only three women. One was the solicitor
for the Labor Department. Outside of government agencies, the Legal
Defense Fund, while headed by Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg,
had the most cases go before the Supreme Court. Judge Motley argued
10 cases in front of the Court between 1961 and 1964.
After the Brown case, Judge Motley was involved with school cases
in Atlanta, Savannah, Brunswick, and Albany, Georgia. She had 12 cases
in Florida where the conditions of the schools were much worse than
the situation in Topeka. Judge Motley was also the one who tried the
case of James Meredith who wanted to attend college at the University
of Mississippi. She tried other college cases as well. Judge Motley
left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in February of 1965 to become president
of Manhattan Law School (?). She left there in September of 1966 to
become a Judge.
Ida Norman
Ida Norman was born Ida Sheffield, in St. Louis, Missouri, on September
22, 1914. After finishing high school she pursued a career in nursing,
receiving a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University.
In the late 1930’s she served as a registered nurse at Douglass
Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, and from 1938-1940 as a nurse and health
supervisor at the Kansas Vocational School in Topeka. She married Leo
Norman on December 24, 1945. To this union was born a daughter, Norma
Jean Norman.
After their marriage, the couple began life as a military family.
Her husband was in the U.S. Navy. In the early 1950’s the family
returned to Topeka from Seattle, Washington. At that time Mrs. Norman
became the first African American school nurse for Topeka Public Schools.
She was assigned to the four segregated schools for African American
children. After the Brown decision, her schedule included several of
the formerly segregated schools for white children, along with the new
Head Start Program. She tried to no avail to persuade the district to
hire more African American School nurses.
Ida Norman also broke barriers by starting the first African American
Girl Scout Troop in Topeka. She saw many changes after school integration.
Mr. Norman is now deceased, and Ida now lives in the care of her daughter,
Norma, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethel L. Parks
Ethel Louise Ransom was born on April 18, 1920, in Topeka, Kansas. She
is the daughter of Jenny B. Collins and James Louis Ransom. Her father
was a medical doctor; his father was a minister. Doctor Ransom provided
medical care to most of the African American Community in Topeka. As
a result her family achieved prominence within the city. After her parents
divorced, Ethel Louise lived with her grandmother in Salina, Kansas
until her second year of high school. Her years in Salina were marred
by racism. In high school she was not allowed to participate in gym
class because of racial discrimination. Still in her teens she moved
to Pasadena, California, to live with her mother and finish high school.
Ethel Louise returned to Topeka, after graduating from high school,
to live with her father and to attend Washburn University. At age 21
she married James Woodson, whom she met in college, and traveled with
him during his military served in the U.S. Army. After World War II,
the couple settled in Topeka. Her husband completed law school at Washburn
University and they started a family. Their two children, Sharon Louise
and James Ransom, would have very different educational experiences.
Sharon attended segregated elementary schools until 1954. She completed
elementary school at the newly integrated Quinton Heights where her
brother would later attend Kindergarten through sixth grade.
While her husband began his private law practice, Ethel Louise completed
her degree and began teaching remedial reading in the Topeka Public
School system. After the Brown decision of 1954, her husband was elected
to the School Board. He died November 3, 1982. Later Ethel Louise remarried
and relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. Her second husband Arthur Parks
died February 17, 1997. She still resides in Kansas City. Her daughter,
Sharon, lives in Los Angeles, California, and her son also lives in
California.
James Parks
James Parks was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1914. He is the eldest child
of Rosa Anna (Draine) Parks and James A. Parks, Sr. His mother was born
in Clarksville, Tennessee, and his father hailed from Windsor, Missouri.
In later years the family grew to include twin boys, Sherman and Sheriden.
James and his brothers attended Sumner Elementary School in Topeka,
which was located across the street from their home. Ironically this
same school would later close its doors to African American children
and become a segregated school for whites only. His education included
graduation from Roosevelt Junior High and Topeka High Schools. He married
Julia Etta in 1941 and in 1942 James became specialist first class in
the U.S. Army.
After returning from World War II he became one of the coaches of
Topeka High School’s segregated African American basketball team
the “Ramblers.” Although both junior and senior high schools
were racially integrated, extra curricular activities were segregated.
By 1948 James Parks had completed his undergraduate degree from Washburn
University. From there he joined the staff of a wholesale drug business,
a job he would keep until retirement. Both James and his wife were active
in the Topeka community. He served as a church trustee at St. John A.
M. E. for some 40 years. He was also an active member of the Omega Si
Phi fraternity. In 1961 and 1962 he was one of 4 commissioners on the
Topeka Planning Commission. Later in life he volunteered for Meals on
Wheels and the Topeka Housing Authority.
James Parks passed away on October 12, 1997. The couple’s only
child, James III, died in 1999. Dr. Julia Etta Parks still resides in
Topeka.
Dr. Julia Etta Parks
Dr. Julia Etta Parks was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on April 5, 1923.
Her parents were Idella Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, and Hays Long
of Hannibal, Missouri. She had one sister who died during childhood.
The family moved to Topeka when Julia Etta’s father became a maitre-de
at the Jayhawk Hotel. She attended Monroe Elementary, a segregated school
for African American children. She went on to Crane Junior High and
Topeka High during her secondary years; both schools had integrated
student bodies. After graduating from high school she married James
A. Parks in 1941 in Tecumseh, Kansas. She had a son, James Pace Parks,
III, of Illinois, who died in 1999.
The young couple joined the historic St. John African Methodist Episcopal
Church. They met in this church and were members there for more then
five decades. Another central part of the African American community
was the Kansas Vocational School at Topeka (KVS), a segregated trade
school. Dr. Parks and her husband attended KVS, which at the time was
considered one of the hubs of the African American life Topeka along
with Fourth Street, which was the black business district. This district
was a major social and business outlet for African Americans. It included
drug stores, barbershops, and a dance hall and tavern, which hosted
entertainers such as Count Basie and Jay McShan.
Julia Etta started college when her son entered junior high school.
She received her bachelor’s and master’s from Washburn University
and her doctorate from the University of Kansas. Her major was education,
specializing in reading instruction for elementary and secondary students.
She taught at Lowman Hill Elementary School and Washburn University.
The Parks’ son also attended segregated Monroe Elementary School,
and went on to Boswell Junior High and Topeka Senior High. He also graduated
from Washburn University. Her husband is now deceased. Dr. Julia Etta
Parks still resides in Topeka.
Ferdinand Pearson
Ferdinand Pearson was born in XXXXX County, South Carolina; he was the
youngest of four children. Pearson’s family had been slaves in
that area. Mrs. Pearson, his mother, died when he was just six years
old; his father remarried and had seven more children with his second
wife. Mr. Pearson’s father was a farmer who owned his land; he
grew corn, peas, cotton, and rice. As a young man, Mr. Pearson spent
several years in Baltimore, Maryland. He was drafted into the army during
World War II; he served in the European theater. He was in the army
for three and a half years.
Many times a year, Ferdinand was kept out of school to help on the
farm. The school year came out to be about four months long due to the
children missing so much school to help on their family’s farm.
Mr. Pearson’s first school was a one-room schoolhouse with two
teachers. After that school was closed, he attended Bob Johnson School.
That school featured a potbellied stove and two rooms; there were no
desks, only benches. Mr. Pearson had to walk between five and eight
miles to get to school.
Pearson’s siblings from his father’s second marriage were
involved the Civil Rights law suite centered around transportation to
and from school for African American children, which later became known
as the Briggs case. They had a sixteen-mile round-trip walk to school.
Mr. Pearson’s father bought an old truck to take many of the kids
to school. He later helped the community buy a bus to transport the
children to school, but it was difficult to keep it in working condition.
After the county repeatedly refused to help with the upkeep of the bus,
the parents turned to the NAACP.
After the law suite was first dismissed on a technicality, many of
the petitioners lost their jobs. Mr. Pearson’s father was denied
credit to buy the supplies he needed to keep the farm going, so Ferdinand
sent him part of the money he made while in the army. Ferdinand Pearson
still resides in the area.
Thayer Brown Phillips
Thayer Brown Phillips was born in Topeka, Kansas, on December 21, 1921,
to parents Madia (Brown) and Jesse R. Phillips. He has a sister, Talayah
Miller, and a brother, George, who passed away in 1967. Madia Phillips
was also born in Topeka, but Jesse Phillips was born in Fort Smith,
Arkansas. Jesse was recruited by Santa Fe to work as a strikebreaker
during the 1936 Railway strike. The family moved around the country
because of Jesse’s job with Santa Fe. Both parents are buried
at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Topeka.
Thayer Phillips attended elementary in Alameda, California, and then
the family moved back to Topeka, so he attended Crane Junior High for
a year. At that time, junior high for African Americans was only a year.
So after a year off, Mr. Phillips went to Topeka High School; he graduated
in 1941 at midyear. On February 27, 1941, he enlisted in the army. Thayer
was stationed at Fort Riley; he helped with the building of the fort
and was a member of the famed 9th U.S. Calvary B the Buffalo Soldiers.
He left the service in November 1945. About a year after he left the
service, he started attending classes at Washburn University on the
G. I. Bill while working at the V. A. Hospital. Eventually he would
earn a master’s degree in social work from the University of Kansas.
Thayer Phillips married Barbara Jean Sheffield in Kansas City, Kansas.
She was born in Hot Springs, Oklahoma. The couple’s son, Jesse
R. Phillips, was born on March 8, 1951. Mr. Phillips still resides in
Topeka.
Jean Price
Jean Price was born in Wichita, Kansas, on June 16, 1929, to parents
Mamie (Richardson) and Glover Scott. She had two sisters and one brother.
Her mother was born in Ottawa, Kansas; in 1946 she died as a result
of breast cancer when Jean was 16 years old, and is buried in Wichita.
Glover Scott was born in Louisiana. He passed away in 1942, after being
hit by a car while riding his bike, when Jean was just 12 years old;
he is also buried in Wichita.
In Wichita, Mrs. Price attended segregated schools in grades first
thru eighth, but went to integrated North High School. However, when
she moved in with her aunt and uncle in Kansas City, Kansas, after her
mother’s death, she went to segregated Sumner High School. After
a year, she moved to Los Angles, California, to live with another aunt
and uncle. The schools there were integrated. She graduated from North
High School in Wichita and went on to attend Wichita University (now
Wichita State University).
It was when she was in the seventh grade that Mrs. Price started working
outside the home; she washed dishes for a neighbor every evening. After
graduating from Wichita University with a teaching degree, she took
a teaching job in Wichita. She attended classes at the University of
Kansas and received a master’s degree in education from Emporia
State University. Jean taught for 38 years.
Jean married Gratz Price on April 30, 1955; he was also born in Wichita,
Kansas. Gratz’s father was a dentist who had moved his practice
from Wichita to Topeka. The couple was introduced to each other by one
of Jean’s former teachers. Mr. Price worked for the Santa Fe Railway.
The couple adopted a five-year-old girl, Pamela (Price) Long.
After they were married, Mrs. Price stayed in Wichita for a while since
she could not find a teaching job in Topeka. She finally found a job
in 1956 at Topeka State Hospital as the first to teach the emotionally
disturbed children who were patients there. After three or four years,
Mrs. Price moved onto a teaching position at Parkdale School; she was
the only African American teacher there. From Parkdale she went to Lowman
Hill; she taught there until her retirement. Mrs. Price still resides
in Topeka.
Fred Rausch, Jr.
Fred Rausch, Jr. grew up in East Topeka, Kansas. The neighborhood his
family lived in was within two blocks of Mud Town. His father, who was
born on a farm near Kingsburry, Kansas, became a paint contractor after
working as a painter for Santa Fe for several years. He met Fred’s
mother while working for Santa Fe in Beaumont, Texas. Fred Rausch attended
Parkdale Elementary School and Lincoln Junior High. After a year and
a half, he was transferred to East Topeka Junior High.
Fred Rausch was elected to the Topeka School Board in 1957. He decided
to run for the school board because as an assistant attorney general
for the state, he was charged with representing the superintendent of
public instruction. Mr. Rausch became interested in the Board and had
several children in the school system, so he decided it would be a good
idea to run for it. He served on the Board for 20 years.
He recalls the first year’s task for the School Board was to
integrate the teachers. The Board’s attorney informed them that
they needed to do this. He remembers that the African American teachers
who were moved to predominantly white schools faced opposition from
some parents, but that after a year or so, they had parents requesting
their children be put into the classes of those same teachers. There
was also some opposition from African American parents about their children
having white teaches; they felt that the white teachers would not be
able to understand the kids as well as their former teachers had. This
died out in a year or so as well.
Mr. Rausch recalls that the schools were integrated by creating neighborhood
schools in which no child attended a grade school that was more than
six blocks from home. Students attended the junior high school that
was within a one-mile radius of their home. The Board felt that this
was what the Brown decision meant, that children who lived across the
street from a school should be able to go to that school. However, this
theory did not take into account neighborhood shifts that would result
in a lesser degree of integration in some schools. His two oldest children
went to three different schools in three years because of the city’s
expansion to the southwest and the subsequent shifts in school boundaries.
Mr. Rausch left the Topeka Board of Education two years before the Brown
case was reopened in 1979.
Connie Rawlins
Connie Rawlins is a native of Prince Edward County, Virginia. She is
one of four children in a family of two boys and two girls. Although
her siblings attended private schools outside of the county, by the
time Connie was ready for school the "Great Depression” was
in full swing and she had to attend public school. Public schools only
extended to 7th grade. However, the Martha E. Forrester Council of Negro
Women worked tirelessly to add one grade each year. They raised money
for equipment and books. Their efforts eventually resulted in the establishment
of the R. R. Morton High School. Connie graduated from the new high
school as a member of the first graduating class. Morton High School
would later become the center of controversy during a strike by the
African-American student body wanting better facilities.
She attended college at Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia,
where she met Mrs. Vera Allen, a woman who would be a positive influence
in Connie’s life. Connie’s teaching career began in Cumberland
County, Virginia, where she taught social studies for three years. It
was while in Cumberland she met and married Dr. Albert G. Rawlins. The
couple eventually relocated because Dr. Rawlins began working for a
hospital in West Virginia. Their three children were born in West Virginia.
Because of the isolation of the area, Connie Rawlins returned to Farmville
in Prince Edward County. She taught high school there until 1959 when
the segregated school closed. She relocated in order for her son to
finish high school in Charlottesville they returned to Farmville in
1965. She recalls the shock of being a teacher in the midst of the student
strike, even though she understood that better facilities were needed.
She vividly recalls the tarpaper shacks that served as extra classrooms.
Joseph Richburg, Sr.
During the time that Joseph Richburg, Sr., was in school, his family
lived the rural area of South Carolina called Spring Hill. It was part
of School District # 8. The first school in the area was held in the
Spring Hill Church. There were only two teachers at that time; the parents
of the students were responsible for providing the wood needed to keep
the school heated. The school went up only to the fourth grade. From
the fifth grade on, the children had to go to school in Summerton; Mr.
Richburg went to Scotch Branch, which was seven miles from his home.
He was able to take his father’s horse and buggy except when it
was time to plow the fields and harvest the crops. At this time, the
Richburgs had some white neighbors whose children were able to take
a bus into Summerton. When it became time for him to start the eighth
grade, Joseph’s father said he needed him at home to help with
plowing the fields and harvesting the crops.
Mr. Richburg was married by the time the Briggs case came about. His
wife was originally from St. Paul; her father had sent her to Sumpter,
South Carolina, to attend Morris College. After completing her second
year, she quite school, got married, and began teaching; she taught
at Joseph’s former school in Spring Hill. In an effort to improve
school conditions, the community bought some barracks and assembled
them on the two acres of land that they had also bought. The NAACP convinced
the community that they needed to sue the district for equal transportation
and equal facilities. At that time, Mr. Richburg’s uncle, E. E.
Richburg, was the local branch’s secretary, and his other uncle,
Lawrence Richburg Rives, was the president. Joseph did not join the
suit when the petition was first circulated because he knew that his
wife would lose her teaching job if he did. He was later convinced to
do so, and Mrs. Richburg did not have a teaching job between 1955 and
1956.
Mrs. Richburg lost her job right after the family had built a new
house. Mr. Richburg was farming as well as working for the Veteran’s
Administration. He was retraining farmers who had served in the military.
Eventually his wife went up North with a group of teachers and found
work, but the teachers were not paid a comparable wage. In August of
1956, Mr. Richburg went to Baltimore, Maryland, where his wife was staying.
He worked as a barber for a while, and then he went into construction
work for a time. From November of 1956 to 1967, he worked in a meat
plant. In 1967 the Richburgs moved back to South Carolina, but their
children stayed with relatives in Baltimore.
Mr. Richburg, Sr. is currently a member of South Carolina’s School
Board for School District # 1. He owns a barbershop and does not plan
to retire anytime soon.
Richard and Frances Ridley
Richard Ridley was born in Topeka, Kansas, on February 10, 1929. His
mother, Maude (Brandon) Ridley was born in 1909 in Jefferson City, Missouri.
She passed away in 1984 and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka.
Dana Ridley, his father, was born on January 14, 1906, in Topeka. Frances
Ridley was born in Osage City, Kansas, on August 1, 1930. Her parents
were Regina (Grant) and King Price. Mrs. Price was born in 1909. King
Price passed away on May 6, 1991; he is buried in Topeka. Richard and
Frances Ridley were married on July 15, 1952, in Topeka. The couple
has three sons and one daughter.
Mr. Ridley went to Monroe Elementary School while Mrs. Ridley went
to school in Holdrege, Nebraska; Her family was the only African American
family in the town. Richard recalls that his education from Monroe was
outstanding; it did not seem inferior to him. He was valedictorian and
president of the senior class at Topeka High School. He attended the
University of North Carolina and the University of Colorado. He has
a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree,
and was 12 hours away from an LL.B. degree when he left school. Mr.
Ridley was in law school when the Brown decision came down from the
U.S. Supreme Court. He knew the local attorneys involved with the case.
The Ridleys reside in Topeka, and Mr. Ridley still works as a social
worker.
Willie Spencer Robinson
Willie Spencer Robinson was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1937 at
Memorial Hospital; he is an only child. His mother was a graduate of
Howard High School in Wilmington. His father worked in a steel mill.
Both parents’ families were from Virginia. Spencer went to elementary
school in the one room State Line School. From the seventh to the tenth
grade he attended Howard High School. He had to walk about a mile to
catch a city bus to get to the high school. His father insisted that
Spencer finish high school since he only went to school through the
third grade.
At the age of fourteen, Spencer got his first job at the Tea House
in Wilmington washing dishes. He worked there for nearly three years.
After the case, his father gave him the choice of staying at Howard
or transferring to Claymont High School for the tenth grade; his mother
wanted him to go to Claymont. Someone put Spencer through some training
so he would be use to hearing the type of verbal abuse he might encounter
at Claymont without reacting to it.
After high school, Mr. Robinson went into the Air Force as a mechanic;
he was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War. He met his wife
while stationed in South Carolina for three years. They got married
in 1959. Spencer Robinson passed away on October 19, 1997.
Merrill and Barbara Ross
Merrill Roy Ross was born on December 28, 1919, in Flatlick, Kentucky
to Tamra (Patton) and Richard F. Ross. His mother was born in Ely, Kentucky,
while his father was born in Rogersville, Tennessee. Both of Merrill’s
parents are buried in Topeka. He married Barbara Jackson on June 12,
1951, in Charleston, West Virginia, to parents Gertrude (Campbell) and
James Jackson. She was born there on August 10, 1926.
Their life’s work and their childhood experiences centered around
education. Mrs. Ross graduated in 1947 from West Virginia State College.
Mr. Ross took a detour, after two years at Kentucky State College (now
Kentucky State University), which resulted in a history making opportunity.
In 1941 Mr. Ross joined a U.S. military experimental program offering
pilot training, for the first time, to African American soldiers. On
December 6, 1941, Merrill Ross made his solo cross-country flight. That
flight placed him in the history books because he was now among the
ranks of the famed and highly decorated Tuskegee Airmen.
After military service he returned to college. A family member living
in Coffeyville, Kansas, persuaded him to transfer to Kansas State Teacher’s
College of Pittsburg (now Pittsburg State University) in Pittsburg,
Kansas. He went on to complete graduate work at the University of Chicago
with additional study at the University of Minnesota.
Merrill Ross met his wife during a teacher-recruiting trip while visiting
friends at Lorkburn Air Force Base. Barbara Jackson was living at the
base with her sister’s family. A mutual acquaintance knew she
was seeking a teaching position. After a brief courtship and marriage,
the couple settled in Topeka. School district policy in Topeka prohibited
married women from teaching. Mrs. Ross raised their children, Karen
and Brian, and served as a substitute teacher. By 1954 Mr. Ross had
become principal of Washington Elementary School. This was one of the
four segregated schools for African American children. Washington was
among the schools named in the Brown case.
In 1963 Mr. Ross became assistant principal of one of the formerly
segregated schools for white children. He served as principal of various
elementary schools until he retired in 1985. In 1993 Highland Park South
Elementary School was renamed in honor of Merrill and Barbara Ross.
After returning to teaching, Mrs. Ross taught school there until 1989.
It is now known as Ross Elementary School. Mr. and Mrs. Ross still reside
in Topeka.
Constance Sawyer
Constance Sawyer was born in Topeka, Kansas, on April 5, 1932 in Christ’s
Hospital (now Stormont Vail Medical Center). Her parents were Theata
(Cyrene) and Daniel Sawyer. Theata Sawyer was born in September 1910
in Topeka; she died in March 1952 and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery
in Topeka. Daniel Sawyer was born in Topeka on April 5, 1902; he passed
away in January 1950 and is also buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in
Topeka. Constance is one of six children born to Theata and Daniel Sawyer.
Constance Sawyer’s grandparents, freed during the Civil War, were
homesteaders in the Topeka area, and her grandfather was active in the
leadership of the NAACP’s Topeka Chapter from its formation in
1913. Ms. Sawyer attended segregated Buchanan Grade School. The school
was a mile from her home; she recalls having to run to keep up with
the older kids on the way to school. As a result, Ms. Sawyer moved in
with her great-grandmother who lived across the street from Buchanan.
That year, the parents of the African American students where successful
with their petition to get the children bused to school.
Her father had a key role in the formulation of the NAACP’s
plan to challenge segregation in the schools. African American students
had a hard time passing their classes in junior high because by the
time they got there, they were two years behind the white students due
to the fact that the African American schools received textbooks from
the white school once they had bought new books.
This situation eventually led to the Graham case where Tinkham Veale
and William M. Bradshaw, representing Ulysses Graham’s parent,
argued that junior high school was part of high school, and by not providing
similar education for African American students, these children were
denied rights under the U.S. and Kansas Constitutions. The Court found
that the refusal to permit twelve-year-old Ulysses Graham to enroll
in a junior high school was "discriminatory.” As a result,
some of the African American teachers were fired as result of the junior
high schools being opened up to African American students in the seventh
grade.
In 1942 or 1943, Ms. Sawyer’s father tried to enroll her sister
Grace at Lowman Hill as part of the local NAACP branch effort to test
the legality of segregation itself. This attempt failed, as did the
1947 attempt with her sister Mary. Ms. Sawyer remembers Esther Brown
coming to Topeka to help raise money for the challenge; she stayed with
the Todds when she was in town. She also recalls the lead |