KU archivist to help plan Brown case anniversary

Desegregation ruling turns 50 in 2004

A Kansas University archivist has been named to a national commission charged with commemorating the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

Deborah Dandridge is one of five Kansans recently named to the 21-member board.

The Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case led to desegregation of the nation's schools and left a paper trail in archive collections throughout the nation. Some documents are stored at KU's Kenneth Spencer Research Library, including photos of the two NAACP attorneys, Charles S. Scott, left, and Elisha Scott, who represented plaintiffs from Topeka, as well as a letter written from Elisha to his son Charles, who was serving overseas in World War II. Kansas University archivist Deborah Dandridge has been appointed to a national commission that's planning a commemoration of the case's 50th anniversary in 2004.

“It’s both an honor and a responsibility,” said Dandridge, who oversees the African-American Collections and the Kansas Collection at KU’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library.

The library’s African-American Collections include hundreds of photographs, papers and manuscripts related to Brown v. Board of Education.

The historic decision found that “separate educational facilities were inherently unequal,” effectively denying the legal basis for segregation in public schools.

“My goal in this is to help the American public come to understand the full significance of ‘Brown’ and to realize that it was not a regional case and that it was not just about the South it is and was national in its significance,” Dandridge said.

Though most Americans associate the decision with Topeka, the case was actually a compilation of cases from Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

The ruling was announced May 17, 1954.

Before the ruling, roughly 90 percent of the nation’s minority children attended segregated schools, Dandridge said.

A Topeka native, Dandridge was in grade school when the decision was announced.

It was a segregated school, “even though we lived two houses down from the white school,” Dandridge said.

She later earned a bachelor’s degree at Washburn University and a master’s degree at Atlanta University. She did her doctoral studies at KU.

“Deborah brings a wealth of experience, academic background and general knowledge about the African American experience in this country. Her contribution will be significant,” said Cheryl Brown Henderson, president of the Topeka-based Brown Foundation and a member of the anniversary commission.

Henderson is one of the children of the late Rev. Oliver Brown, namesake of the Brown decision.

Congress last year set aside $250,000 for commission-coordinated activities in 2003 and 2004.

Other Kansans on the commission:

Daniel D. Holt, director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene

Steven Adams, superintendent of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka

Jesse Milan, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of Kansas.

The commission’s first meeting is Nov. 15 at Howard University in Washington, D.C.