Monroe community effort

By KRISTEN L. HAYS
The Capital-Journal

Nearly four years ago, Congress designated the former Monroe Elementary School as the Brown vs. Board National Historic Site, and the building is still waiting for federal money to turn it into a bona fide museum.

That doesn't mean all action regarding the museum is at a standstill. Between furloughs of federal workers due to congressional budget battles, the three-member National Park Service staff in Topeka has managed to finish some repairs on the building as well as plan an outreach program to teach local school children about Brown and its significance.

Brown is the landmark segregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Handed down in 1954, Brown opened the door to the civil rights movement. The museum will be a home for oral, written and pictorial history of Brown, desegregation across the country and the civil rights movement in general.

Monroe is the home became it was one of Topeka's four all-black elementary schools in operation before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated public education. Before 1954, Topeka had 22 elementary schools -- four all black, 18 all white.

The case's namesake was the Rev. Oliver Brown, one of 13 parents who tried unsuccessfully to enroll their children in the all-white school in their neighborhoods. His oldest daughter, Linda Brown, had to attend Monroe, more than 20 blocks from her home, rather than all-white Sumner Elementary, which was nearby.

Ray Harper, the site's superintendent, wants its development to be a community effort. Last August he escorted Mayor Butch Felker and officials from the Topeka Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Kansas State Historical Society, Downtown Topeka, the Topeka Chamber of Commerce and the Brown Foundation to Birmingham, Ala., to tour The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

The institute was conceived and funded by the city of Birmingham and local business -- not the park service -- but the example of such teamwork is something Harper wants to duplicate in Topeka. Though the site is a national park, he wants Topeka to have ownership of it as well, he said.

And he's not waiting around for congressional appropriations.

In mid-January, Harper joined forces with Pat Kells, executive director of the Kansas Commission on Community Service, which oversees the state's AmeriCorps programs, for cleanup and beautification work at the site.

Instead of taking Martin Luther King Jr. Day off, AmeriCorps members from Topeka, Kansas City and Wichita, and volunteers from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Topeka rolled up their sleeves.

And more recently, Topekan Don Olin, a former member of the Topeka Board of Education and a former Monroe pupil, donated $1,000 to the site. Olin also encouraged other Monroe alumni to donate as well.

Cheryl Brown Henderson, executive director of the Brown Foundation, matched Olin's donation with foundation funds. The Unitarian Church also gave $100.

"We can see already there is a lot of local excitement and interest in how they can help the site get on-line," Harper said.

Officials hope to receive federal restoration funds to complete the museum by 1998. The park service doesn't yet know how much money it will receive in fiscal 1995, so the big dollars remain in limbo.

That doesn't mean Harper and Robin White, the site's interpreter, are sitting idle. Bit by bit they are relying on local efforts to keep the building in shape while conducting presentations on Brown,in local schools to show the case's significance to education as well as civil rights history.