Celebrating Brown v. Board at 70: Hallowed but hollow for too many Kansans

Visitors on April 6, 2023, at the Kansas Statehouse observe the third-floor mural commemorating the landmark Brown v. Board decision. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Kansas and the nation have celebrated the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision of 1954 for much of the past few months. Legal scholars consider it one of the five most important decisions ever handed down by the high court.

It marked the first time that the government acknowledged the damage done by the slavery, segregation and subjugation that has marked life here in North America for the past 330-plus years on this continent.

The state’s bar association just hosted former U.S. Ambassador and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young in Topeka last week, building a continuing legal education event around a keynote address delivered by Young.

In 2014, then-First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to Topeka for mark Brown’s 60th anniversary. Because of Brown, Topeka at one point emerged as the western terminus for UNESCO’s American Civil Rights Trail.

But why celebrate Brown as a triumph when so much of the country reflexively rejects virtually any attempt at addressing these old wrongs? We still don’t know if we’ll ever become the country we claim to be. Brown offers the perfect mirror.

The decision helped much of the country understand that even if physical facilities and other factors were equal, segregation still harmed Black children. It found this kind of separation unconstitutional.

Brown remains, for many, hallowed but hollow.

At a 2014 symposium at the University of Kansas, former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Theodore Shaw said schools in New York where he lived were as separate then as they were when lawyers filed Brown.

At the same conference, professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries, younger brother of current U.S. House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, said Brown detractors never stopped inveighing against the ruling.

Jeffries said grassroots demonstrations took place outside previously segregated schools as Black children arrived. Opponents created rallying cries like “forced busing” and “school choice.” They fled to suburbs and established private, Christian schools.

Black educators suffered in the aftermath of Brown, too. As separate schools closed and white parents vowed that no Black person would ever teach their child, many Black educators found themselves displaced.

In Wichita, school officials bused Black students virtually their entire school lives, while entering white students in a lottery virtually none of them wanted to win. If their names popped up in the lottery, they got bused to an inner-city school for a year or two.

And while creating educational palaces for their own children in suburbs, many parents fought the bond issues proposed to bring aging urban school facilities into the modern age with air conditioning and wiring for tech.

Daring and desperate parents trying to secure a better education for their children were punished for attempting to enroll their children in these stronger, better-funded districts.

The Kansas Legislature has generally fought public education and continues to flirt with the idea that taxpayers should fork over sorely needed money to help middle-class parents send their children to private schools.

The Legislature also has proposed measures that would limit what historical stories could be taught and discussed, centering the feelings of white students over the circumstances that Black and other minority groups have experienced historically.

All of this, but we’re still “proud” of Brown?

Proud of what exactly? That we say one thing but behave differently? That we’re fine with unfairness as long as it’s coated in a thin veneer of contrived innocence? Proud of renouncing a caste system so many still quietly support?

This remains a debilitating dual reality our state and nation refuse to reconcile. Like a dog named “Stay,” when called to act, we don’t know what to do.

So, we dress up. We invite dignitaries. We host events at our museums.

Supporting historical events such as Brown makes us look good, but unwilling to actually go anywhere.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .

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