May 17th is the 70th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education which ended legal segregation in public schools. It ruled “separate but equal” was unconstitutional. As we remember the community leaders who sacrificed and fought to give all parents the right to send their children to schools they selected, this is a time to stop and reflect on who these individuals were.
I authored Building Parent Capacity in High Poverty Schools: Actions for Authentic Engagement, and the Brown v. Board case is an integral part. The community leaders who disrupted a system and impacted the nation were parents in the community. They were hard working Topekans who served in the community as a pastor, a beautician, a welder and other important roles that contributed to the community.
They were parents who wanted the right for their children to attend school in their neighborhood. With the help of the NAACP, and Thurgood Marshall along with plaintiffs across states, they challenged a system and in Topeka, Kansas through the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board declared legal segregation unconstitutional in 1954.
The plaintiffs disrupted the system, and later in the 1950s my mother, Edna Montgomery, and her sister Joyce Hill, were among the first students to integrate Soldan High school. Their courageous steps led me 40 years later to serve as the principal next to Soldan at Clark Accelerated Academy in the 1990s.
In 1955, the year following the Brown case, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on the bus and her steps led to the civil rights movement. The Brown v. Board case was in many ways the catalyst for events that followed resulting in the civil rights movement.
Taking the first step to change the future as the first Black female superintendent in Topeka, Kansas for the last eight years has helped open a door to the four Black superintendents in Kansas today. Without the first opening of a door, there will never be a second.
The work for equitable access to opportunities continues. Today, school demographics in many cities follow the contour of poverty and the effects of segregation through redlining neighborhoods to keep families of color in certain areas in communities.
In uplifting the legacy of Brown v. Board, we must do our part to uplift the community by disrupting inequities within housing, economic opportunities and in education. We should all be bothered by the fact that poverty and race are still predictors of educational outcomes. Until this changes, the work is not done.
As I uplift the legacy of the leaders who sacrificed to open doors that were once closed, we must all courageously continue the work in opening the door creating a new path for others to travel. Sometimes this means being the first to walk through a door once closed so it’s open for those who will become after you.
The late Supreme Court Justice Marshall, an attorney for the Brown case, stated “None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”
We are the “somebody” Marshall was describing and each of us must do our part in continuing to uplift the legacy of the Brown v. Board case 70 years later by helping others pick up their boots as we create a new path for others to travel advocating for equitable access and opportunities for all families.
Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of Topeka Public Schools, is a native St. Louisan and former Jennings School District superintendent
