"...Brown remains a milestone achievement, and it likely wouldn’t have played out in the same way if it hadn’t had been for Webb v. School District 90 five years earlier."
May 17, 1954, SCOTUS announced its decision in Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka, KS, ruling that "separate but equal" was anything but.
KCUR's Mackenzie Martin relates the story of a Kansas court case that paved the way for Brown.
“'There’s a direct line that can be traced from that case in South Park, Kansas, to the one in Topeka,' says Kansas City journalist Dan Margolies.
That case, Webb v. School District 90, might never have come about, however, if it hadn’t been for a few determined women, who pushed for equality with everything they had."
Teachers at an Black school, their students, and local activists took their indignation at White students getting a new school as theirs slowly fell apart.
“'Whatever was there was broken down,' [teacher Cornithian] Nutter said in an interview around 1995. 'We just didn’t have anything.'"
The national NAACP got involved, jobs were lost, threats made, but the Black families and their allies kept up the push, eventually seeing that "separate but equal" wasn't being observed. The Black students went on "strike" and attended classes in private homes, their teachers funded by bake sales.
Teacher Hazel McCray-Weddington with the students she taught in South Park living rooms during the 1948-49 school year. Johnson County Museum.
The state ruled that all the students could attend the same, new, school.
"It was the first grade school desegregation victory in which the NAACP Legal Defense Fund played a direct role. Thanks to the coverage by Black-owned Kansas newspapers like The Call and the Topeka Plaindealer, South Park became nationally famous."
