Hidden Histories: Cultural Diversity in Johnson County
Last spring, the Johnson County Museums embarked on an oral history project to closely study two communities: the Jewish community and South Park, an African-American community in Merriam. The oral history project was part of the ongoing research and planning to develop the new permanent exhibit “Seeking the Good Life.” The exhibit will focus on how families, homes and communities in Johnson County reflect our changing notions of the “good life.” The oral histories tell the stories of some families who were, at times, excluded from achieving the “good life.”
A grant from the Kansas Humanities Council supported a project team of four scholars and five graduate students from area universities. Four community advisors joined the project team to select persons for the interviews and assisted with the interview process. An oral history training session was held for the graduate students who conducted the interviews. Transcribed interviews will become part of the Museums’ permanent oral history collection and will be available to the public.
Two events shaped the project: a school desegregation case in South Park in the late 1940s and the recent relocation of the Jewish Community Center from Kansas City, Missouri to Overland Park. The South Park experience is featured in this issue; the Jewish community will be featured in a subsequent issue. The short article on page 7 provides a glimpse into the kinds of stories that are being collected among the Jewish community.
“Hidden Histories” coincided with the 40th anniversary of the “Brown v. Topeka Board of Education” school desegregation case. The Museum of History developed an exhibit on the South Park case. This was shown this fall along with a traveling exhibit that traced the struggle for equal education, culminating in “Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.” In conjunction with the exhibits, some of the participants in the South Park case presented a panel discussion during the annual meeting of the Friends of Johnson County Museums. The history of the county’s Jewish community will be presented in temporary exhibit planned for 1996.
Early South Park
South Park began in the 1880s as a suburban community of cottages, lakes and parks. Today, South Park is nearly hidden behind the busy I-35 interchange and industrial park that surround the original 360-acre suburban development. Platted in 1887, South Park was the largest subdivision proposed in Johnson County during an area real estate boom. Its location south of the Kansas City, Ft. Scott and Gulf Railroad tracks and the Wyandotte and Johnson County lines suggests the origin of the name. The South Park Improvement and Investment Company of Kansas City promoted the community as a garden suburb with “A home for everybody.” Sales literature promised “Best lots at $3, $5, $7, $10 or more,…and, all the time you want to pay.” Time or installment plans were then something to advertise.
The affordable suburban lots with easy access to the downtown area attracted buyers from Kansas City, Missouri. The new residents quickly established businesses, churches, and schools. Many residents worked at Crowe Spring Works, manufacturing buggies and carriage springs. By 1888, the South Park business district included three stores, a butcher, and a bakery.
Segregation Begins
Unlike most suburban developments established at the turn of the century, South Park was originally an integrated community. The 1900 census listed 250 residents, including four “negro” families. Early school records described a one-room schoolhouse built in 1888 for the “colored and white children who lived in the area.” Integration, however, was short-lived in South Park. From about 1900 until 1949, black and white students attended separate schools.
Like many cities in Kansas with growing African-American populations, South Park established segregated schools by the turn of the century. By 1912, a one-room school for white students was built on the current site of the South Park Elementary School. Black students attended school a few blocks away, in the older school building (now the Philadelphia Baptist Church).
Little is known about this facility until the late 1920s, when it became known as the Walker School. It was named for Madame Walker, who built a substantial fortune developing hair products and cosmetics for blacks. Some repairs were made to the old school building and new blackboards were installed in 1929. By this time, two teachers were employed at the Walker School.
Protest Begins
By the early 1940s, the South Park School District enrollment had increased to 287. Two principals administered two very different schools. Education in South Park was far from equal, and the conditions were about to be challenged. As one former Walker School student recalled, “the students at the South Park School were advancing everyday, where we were just crawling.”
Black students attending grades one through eight at the Walker School were divided between two teachers in two poorly lit rooms. Over forty boys and girls shared an outdoor bathroom. The basement lunchroom frequently flooded, disabling the heating system. Concerned parents’ requests for improvements resulted only in a new coat of paint and new windowpanes.
In contrast, white students attended the all-brick South Park Elementary School. Built at a cost of $90,000, the school had eight modern classrooms and as many teachers, a multi-purpose auditorium, a lunchroom, and playground. Black parents protested the use of their tax money to pay for a new school that excluded their children. Still, the school board refused admittance and renewed their promise to improve conditions at the Walker School.
Walker’s Walkout
During the spring of 1948, the black community continued to petition the school board to admit their children to the new school. One of the parents, Mrs. Swann, shared the community’s dilemma with her employer, Esther Brown, who offered to attend a school board meeting on their behalf. Outraged by the racist attitudes of the school board, Mrs. Brown began a door-to-door campaign to rally the black community. With Alfonso Webb, whose children attended the Walker School, she organized a local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to secure support for their cause. Esther Brown also hired a lawyer, Elisha Scott of Topeka, to begin legal proceedings against the South Park School Board.
In May 1948, “Webb v. School District No. 90” was filed in the Kansas Supreme Court. When students were denied access to the new elementary school that fall, the Walker students staged a boycott known as “Walker’s Walkout.” All but two students attended classes in private homes and a church. The community organized bake sales, rummage sales, and a tea to raise money for teachers’ salaries and to support legal expenses.
During the school boycott, a portion of the Webb family’s home was set on fire. Alfonso Webb and his children “bucket and tubbed” their well water to put out the flames. Mrs. Brown and her family were harassed with prank telephone calls and their home was threatened as well.
The South Park School Board responded to the lawsuit by changing the district lines, essentially creating two school districts in the community. The boundary lines were drawn to exclude all black students from attending the new school. They also promised to upgrade the Walker School after the debt for building the new school was retired — in thirty years. The black parents refused their offer.
“Webb V. School District No. 90”
After more than a year of protest and sacrifice, the Kansas Supreme Court decided in favor of the black residents of South Park. In June 1949, the Kansas City Call proclaimed, “Victory Won by Children Who Went on Strike.” In September 1949, black students enrolled at the South Park Elementary School without violence or protest.
The Webb decision upheld state laws prohibiting school segregation in communities with populations of fewer than 15,000 people, first class cities with larger populations could legally provide separate but equal schools. The Court also found that the South Park School Board had illegally established school boundaries to separate students by race. The Webb lawsuit was the eleventh illegal school segregation case to reach the Kansas Supreme Court. The next step was to challenge the “separate but equal” philosophy. This was accomplished in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation unconstitutional.
In South Park, the Webb case opened new doors for the black community. High school students were admitted to Shawnee Mission Rural in 1950, ending a long commute to Sumner High School in Wyandotte County. In the mid-1950s, the Walker School building served as a community center for area teenagers. White and black youth gathered there for sporting events, music, and games.
Webb’s Legacy
Esther Brown and the Webb case left an unforgettable legacy among the citizens of South Park. Esther Brown helped the residents of South Park organize and lobby for their civil rights. The students of “Walker’s Walkout” had the courage to enter an all-white school and would later “fight [discrimination] harder because of what happened in South Park.”
South Park residents organized again during the 1960s, when they sought neighborhood improvements and city services. Many were threatened with violence for their efforts to install adequate street lighting, modern plumbing, and electricity in their homes. The memory of the families and children involved with Esther Brown in the Webb case helped them to persist in their struggle to secure their civil rights in other arenas.
--ALBUM vol. 8, no. 1 (winter 1995)