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"Because It’s the Right Thing to Do": The Battle for School Integration in Johnson County, Kansas
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This paper evaluates the importance of the often overlooked Kansas Supreme Court case Webb v. School District No. 90, both as the springboard to Brown v. Board of Education and as a micro-history of racial attitudes and black resistance in the border state of Kansas. As I delved into primary documents on file at the National Archives, Library of Congress, and Kansas Historical Society, as well as local newspaper articles, a multi-dimensional picture emerged of the integrated community of South Park in Johnson County, Kansas, where African Americans challenged the white power structure to obtain a quality education for their children. The act of resistance is examined through first-person accounts and court testimonies of individuals involved in the day-to-day events. The case study is contextualized against the backdrop of the Red Scare and the duplicity of the racial attitudes of post-World War II America. An analysis of the Webb case reveals that despite its reputation as “Free Kansas,” the state was steeped in Jim Crow racial practices and policies. These attitudes are exposed using court records, personal letters and newspaper articles that collectively demonstrate the entrenched, virulent racism prevalent in the Midwest in the 1940s, and how resistance to white hegemony in Johnson County was organized and sustained in South Park. This paper argues that Webb was a training ground for the legal strategies used in Brown v. Board of Education and for the team that organized the Topeka black community and assisted the NAACP attorneys in winning the landmark case. Simultaneously, the bravery the South Park parents showed in protesting segregation in the local school triggered a pivotal event on the continuum of black resistance and in the emerging national Civil Rights Movement.
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Introduction -- The myth of "free Kansas": racial discrimination on free soil -- Political imperatives of Kansas School segregation -- The beginning of the legal battle for equal education in South Park -- Esther Brown: communist or activist? -- Thurgood Marshall and the Fourteenth Amendment strategy -- Bullies and boycotts: South Park blacks take a stand -- Forgotten heroes: the parents, the teachers of South park, Kansas, and The Kansas City Call -- Waiting and Wichita and winning -- A final insult and eventual triumph -- Epilogue: changing memories: changing lives -- Appendix A. Illustrations -- Appendix B. Timeline of critical events
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M.A.