Word: topeka
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Compared with most Northern cities, as Smith concedes, Topeka has made huge strides toward integration of its schools since she was forced to walk five blocks to a pickup point, from which she was bused to all-black Monroe Elementary School, although all-white Sumner School was located just two blocks from her home. And unlike cities in the Deep South, where whites began a generation of resistance to desegregation, Topeka did not even wait for the court to rule before taking steps to amalgamate its black and white elementary schools...
...ruling. By the 1955-56 school year, more than half of all black grade-school children and two-thirds of whites were enrolled in mixed classes. By 1968 Linda's alma mater, Monroe Elementary, had a 25%-white student body. By the 1986-87 school year, not a single Topeka school had a student body less than 6.2% or more than 62% black. Twice during the 1970s, the Federal Government surveyed Topeka's schools and found them in compliance with desegregation policies. Still more striking were steady gains by blacks in the city's school administration. By last year...
...those reasons many Topeka whites were bemused, even annoyed, at Smith's resurrection of an embarrassing era that they regarded as long since closed. Few had any idea that no court had ever specifically ruled that the city's schools were in fact desegregated. Among Topeka's 11,000 blacks, there was bitter disagreement about the merits of returning the case to court. Says Marvin Edwards, who became Topeka's first black superintendent in 1985: "You almost wonder what the big issue is. There has been tremendous progress toward integration since...
...local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, architect of the original Brown case, declined to participate when Smith and the parents of 15 other black Topeka schoolchildren intervened in 1979. The chapter's combative president, Kenneth Hill, charged that the black lawyers who recruited Smith and her fellow plaintiffs "were not fighting for the kids in the schools at all. They were fighting for the leadership of blacks and all the empty honors they can get." The plaintiffs turned to the American Civil Liberties Union for legal assistance. It took seven years for the case...
...John's African Methodist Episcopal Church, to join the N.A.A.C.P.'s legal struggle against segregation. She described the "feelings of inferiority" suffered by her children because they attended schools that were considered "black" though large numbers of white children attended them. Her lawyers contended that many of Topeka's schools remain "racially identifiable" because of a preponderance of black or white students. They argued that schools with the largest proportion of black students have "substantially inferior" facilities and teaching, contributing to the poorer scores that lower-class blacks tend to get on achievement tests. In order to bring each...