Topeka ? A formerly all-white school at the center of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case has been sold by the city for $89,000.

At an auction Thursday night, Los Angeles-based True Foundation World Outreach Ministries outbid a Topeka community organization for Sumner Elementary School, where Oliver Brown tried to enroll his 9-year-old daughter, Linda, in 1950.

The ministry says the art deco style school will be turned into a community center that will offer counseling, job assistance and other services. The city bought the property in 2002 for $45,000.

“We were willing to go as high as it took,” said True Foundation pastor Zaire Thomas, who outbid Ephren Taylor, a New York investor who represented the Topeka-based nonprofit group Community First Inc.

The City Council still must approve the purchase, and the ministry must make a 20 percent down payment and pay off the balance within 45 days.

In 1950, members of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People decided to challenge the city’s segregated school system in federal court. Oliver Brown and 12 other black parents tried to enroll their children in white schools that fall.

Brown’s name was listed first in the federal lawsuit, filed in 1951, and that case was consolidated with others from Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware.

In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional. The black school that Linda Brown was required to attend was Monroe Elementary School, and that building now serves as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site.

Thomas and his wife, Mary Beth Thomas, said the ministry plans to offer programs at the Sumner School building in areas that include employment education, counseling, entrepreneurship and the arts.