Capitol Insider

Carolyn Wims-Campbell says she imagines Linda Brown smiling at the newly installed Statehouse mural that celebrates the U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned segregation of public schools.

Brown died just weeks before a ceremony last Thursday marking the 64th anniversary of the decision and the debut of artist Michael Young's work. Young and Campbell joined Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, who teaches at Highland Park High School in Topeka, for the latest episode of the Capitol Insider podcast.

Campbell, who served eight years on the Kansas State Board of Education, went to the church where Brown's father preached. She said the two grew up, then grew old together.

"I can see Linda sitting there and just thinking about all her life and how this Brown v. Board pushed her into the public spotlight," Campbell said. "And then remembering her daddy, as she would share with us, took her by the hand on the day they went to Sumner to enroll and of course was denied enrollment.

Young's mural shows Sumner and Monroe schools and captures the civil rights struggle with demonstrators charging into a vanishing point. A teacher's desk features a framed photo of Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board before the nation's high court and later become a supreme court justice.

During the podcast, which is hosted by The Topeka Capital-Journal's Statehouse bureau chief, Tim Carpenter, Young revealed he embedded "small little things for children to find," such as ladybugs flying around a sunflower. The bus number is 52 because that is the year he was born.

Thanks to Hensley's insistence, the mural appears outside the former Kansas Supreme Court room where Brown v. Board and 11 preceding cases were argued in hopes of rejecting the separate-but-equal doctrine.

Campbell lived through the struggle depicted in the mural. Her first experience in an integrated school was in junior high, where she encountered hate and prejudice from fellow students.

"I'm a proud product of segregation," she said. "From kindergarten to sixth grade, all my teachers were black. All my classmates were black. We're a family today. As old as we are, we connect."

In conjunction with last week's anniversary, The Capital-Journal published an in-depth report showing Topeka-area schools are divided in minority enrollment. At Highland Park, 80 percent of the student body is made up of racial minorities. Less than 10 miles north, Seaman High School is 81 percent white.

"I think Brown opened up a lot of doors for individual students to have equal educational opportunities," Hensley said. "I think what's happened in Topeka, the demographics obviously have changed, and it seems to me that there is more of a segregated population of students than there has been in a long time."

Over time, Hensley said, parents moved to suburban areas to enroll children in schools outside of the Topeka district. He said boundary lines for high schools have been in place for 40 years, and the school board should consider moving the lines to reflect changing demographics.

"I'm very proud that Highland Park is a very diversified school," Hensley said, "but I think the school board needs to come to grips that we do need to make some boundary changes."