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191 KANSAS 33 Shades of Brown Charles Marvin My sister-in-law Patricia says that Kansas can be thought of in terms of shades of brown—the earth on the ground, the dust in the air, and the burnt grass by the end of the long, hot summer. Thus my first memory of it is the picture of the scorched earth as our family arrived by train from New york City in the small county seat and university town of Lawrence in July of 1948. But my professional memory is of another Brown, my school contemporary Linda Brown, who lived with her parents in the neighboring community of Topeka, Kansas. When we were both ten going on eleven years old, the lawsuit filed on Linda Brown’s behalf was big news in Kansas and across the country, as it had been joined with lawsuits from other jurisdictions in litigation to desegregate public schools, litigation that was being heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. Although I was young, this lawsuit caught my attention. I was a news junky, the son of a university journalism school dean in a household that subscribed to four newspapers (including the Topeka Daily Capital). It was very interesting to me that a lawsuit was being entertained to deal with problems of the Negro (the perceived appropriate label at the time, for which the term “black” was substituted later on) population in Kansas, small as it was. It was not that I was unaware of minorities. On the beginning day of classes in first grade in my primary school in 1948, I had entered the classroom somewhat on the late side, and noticed that the one place on the standard doubledesk seat near the front was not taken; on the other side of it sat a little Negro boy. Not thinking much about it at the time, I sat down and introduced myself to Bobby Mitchell, who was to be one of my classmates up through Lawrence High School. By the time Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, got rolling in the court system, the situation in Lawrence had become somewhat clearer to me. Although Lawrence had been settled in the 1850s by rabid abolitionists from Massachusetts, had become the Free State Fortress during the years of “Bleeding Kansas” leading up to and through the Civil War, and had suffered from the slaughter of its unarmed menfolk by Missouri border raiders under 192 De Facto States the hated Quantrill, by the turn of the century the town had become quietly segregated. Langston Hughes cited the pain he felt during his childhood there. By the 1930s and 1940s, the town (if not the gown) had cemented its reputation for being antiunion and antiblack. Although some children such as Bobby Mitchell went to integrated schools, there was one entirely Negro school in Lawrence, the Abraham Lincoln School. As of the 1950s, that school was in an appalling state—stinking toilet areas and a poorly maintained building, with insufficient funding for even minimally adequate educational supplies. (I am happy to say that this school was closed shortly after Brown came to the fore). For the most part, the black population in Kansas kept a low profile. Its presence was not much to be noted outside of major urban areas. In fact, it was so small, it is not surprising that when my younger brother Bob first developed substantial speaking skills at age two, he should exclaim at seeing a different peer on Massachusetts Street in the heart of downtown Lawrence, “Look at the chocolate baby!” Kansas politicians and the Kansas public did not have any desire to take flak on their public schools, so school systems across the state were integrated, at least in a formal sense, within a short period of time after Brown was heard a second time by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Court unanimously, under its new chief justice, the frustrated proactive presidential candidate Earl Warren, rendered the surprising and resounding judgment overturning the old separate but equal doctrine ensconced in the law by that same court in Plessy v. Ferguson. Long after the Brown decision came down, discriminatory practices against minorities continued in Lawrence. There were more than a few lunch counters across Douglas County (named for Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, of Douglas-Lincoln debates fame) where signs were still posted and acted upon that stated: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” It...

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