The Case that Led to Public School Integration in Kansas: Esther Brown (Jewish Community Center)

In 1947, a group of determined Black parents in the tiny town of South Park, KS (now part of Merriam), clamored for improvements to their children’s rundown, segregated school. The school board turned them down and then refused their children admission to a newly built elementary school–even though Kansas law prohibited segregated public schools in towns the size of South Park.

The parents, aided by a white Jewish woman named Esther Brown, sued and, in 1949, the Kansas Supreme Court handed down a seminal decision ordering the school to be integrated. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.

Members of the Jewish Community Center/The J KC should enroll through their activities director.