Thursday, January 1st, 2009
History Lessons
A former segregated school in Topeka, Kan., takes visitors back to a time when division was taught before addition – and celebrates a court decision that changed race relations forever.
By Sarah Smarsh
Illustration by Joel Peter Johnson
Tucked in a quiet corner of Topeka, Kan. (an hour from Kansas City), the former Monroe Elementary School sits amid a small cluster of warehouses and brick buildings. Enormous trees evoke a sense of calm, and the build- ing itself is traditional 1920s architecture.
Fifty-five years ago, however, the scene was not so bucolic: Monroe was a pivotal location in the battle over racial separation in American classrooms.
It was one of four grade schools for African- Americans in the capital city where the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education originated, in part. Monroe closed in 1975, but was reborn two decades later as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site.
Since opening five years ago, tens of thousands of people from more than 20 countries have visited the school-turned- museum, which is operated by the National Park Service. Each year, about 30,000 visitors—including many school children—walk its halls and step into its classrooms to learn about racial segregation and the people who fought on all sides of the controversy.
Park ranger Joan Wilson says that visitors come to the site for many reasons.
“Some come here looking for closure. Some come to remind themselves of what they lived through. Some come to make amends; they were whites who didn’t take a stand, or they were perpetrators themselves,” says Wilson, who previously served as a ranger at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. She has been in Topeka since 2006, when she requested a transfer to immerse herself in a historic landmark she regards very seriously.
“The exhibits go all the way back to the enslavement of Africans in this country. Coming here is looking into history—a very confusing time where we, as Americans, came to a crossroads,” Wilson says. “It’s how we bury those old ghosts.” At the Brown v. Board site, those ghosts are everywhere.
In the old auditorium, screens flash powerful images related to segregation. On the walls are photos of famous African- American thinkers including Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes. Meanwhile, an older African-American man guides a schoolgirl through a history lesson in the film Race and the American Creed.
The “Education and Justice” exhibit includes interactive stations such as touch-screen history lessons and biographies of some of the first African-American students to enter white schools, including the famous “Little Rock Nine.”
The most riveting experience of the whole site may be the “Hall of Courage”—a dark, narrow passage between ceiling-high screens that show footage of the many whites who taunted and threatened students walking toward newly integrated schools. Wilson says that walking down this hall is an emotional experience for many.
The Hall of Courage was the brainchild of Cheryl Brown Henderson, president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, which spent 14 years working to make the site and its exhibits come to fruition.
“I wanted people to have a visceral experience—to feel how scary it was being part of this effort to integrate schools. It resonates for everyone, not just African-Americans,” says Brown Henderson, whose father attempted to enroll her sister at an all-white Topeka school in 1951 and eventually became the “Brown” in Brown v. Board.
“The mission was to make the story accessible to the public. It’s a universal story of people being denied certain rights. Education is the foundation of citizenship, yet it was being withheld from a group of people,” says Brown Henderson, who was three years old when desegregation was mandated. “The goal was to tell the African-American experience in a way that is interactive and easy to understand.”
While the case utilized Brown Henderson’s father’s name, it also involved 12 other plaintiffs in Kansas. The Supreme Court consolidated it with similar cases initiated by the NAACP in Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. Deliberations were organized under the Kansas case to distance the dialogue from the deeply divided South.
Brown Henderson is quick to underline that Brown v. Board resulted not just from the courage of individuals like her father, but also from “a well thought-out, organized movement by the NAACP,” and the “legal brilliance” of Thurgood Marshall and others. Similarly, the site resulted from this kind of tenacity—in this case, on the part of her foundation.
“People tend to think these national sites spring up because Congress woke up one morning and thought to create them, but that’s not the case,” says Brown Henderson, whose dedication earned her the National Education Association’s highest honor, the Friend of Education Award, in 2005.
The site gives a nod to that collective energy necessary to affect change: In a former classroom space, the “Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education” exhibit allows visitors to listen to protest music by artists from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan. The walls are covered in images of current barriers to education— the Catholic-Protestant divide in Ireland, remnants of South African apartheid, regimes oppressing women in Afghanistan.
Near this classroom, a film shows an African-American man from the Civil Rights era, complete with fedora hat, skinny tie and thick black eyeglasses, passing a baton to an African-American boy, who turns and keeps running. It’s this idea of keeping the Civil Rights legacy alive that drives the Brown Foundation, which provides scholarships and sponsors programs on diversity and education, including the “Race and the American Creed” series of events and exhibits taking place at the site throughout the year.
“Change is made one-on-one and becomes a chain reaction,” says Brown Henderson, who acknowledges that there is much work left to be done in the pursuit of equal education. “You can legislate behavior, but [you] can’t legislate the hearts and minds of people.”
SCHOOL IS IN SESSION
The “Race and the American Creed” series at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic site features exhibits and concerts all year long.
“Oh, Freedom Over Me”
Through Jan. 30
In the summer of 1964, eight photographers—who formed the Southern Documentary Project—recorded the rapid social change taking place in Mississippi and other parts of the South. This traveling photography exhibit is from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
“Quilting African American Women’s History: Our Challenges, Creativity, and Champions”
Feb. 15 to March 30
This exhibition examining the rich history of African- American women was organized by the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center of the Ohio Historical Society and curated by internationally renowned artist and historian Carolyn Mazloomi, Ph.D.
To Kill a Mockingbird: The Big Read
Feb. 18 at 2:30 p.m.
The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library is partnering with the Brown site for a community discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Saturday Night at “The Down Beat”
March 28 at 7 p.m.
Renowned blues and jazz musician Kelly Hunt celebrates National Women’s History Month with a musical journey through the history of female singers.
“To Enjoy and Defend Our American Citizenship: Fighting for Civil Rights in the Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act”
April 3-30
This important exhibit, presented by the Chinese Historical Society of America and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, reveals how the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 tore apart families and halved the number of Chinese-Americans living in the country, while denying those who were here the ability to become U.S. citizens.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site Fifth Anniversary
May 17
Since its grand opening in 2004, tens of thousands of people from more than 20 countries have visited the site. Programming for the anniversary celebration is to be determined.
“Desegregation and Civil Rights Political Cartoons by Herb Block”
June 1-30
This exhibition features a selection of original cartoons spanning Herb Block’s career as a political cartoonist, including work about desegregation and civil rights.
