Traveling Exhibit - Panels

 

Brown v. Board of Education - In Pursuit of Freedom & Equality - Traveling Exhibit
   
Panel 5 - Equal Opportunity Deferred
THE NATION ADOPTED RACIAL SEGREGATION AS PUBLIC POLICY in the 1896 United States Supreme Court decision, Plessy v Ferguson.

 The Plessy case centered on segregated seating in passenger cars on Louisiana trains. After this decision segregation spread in public accommodations and schools.

 

"Through the children of to-day we can build the foundation of the next generation upon such a rock of morality, intelligence and strength, that the floods of proscription, prejudice and persecution may descend upon it in torrents and yet it will not be moved"
-- Mary Church Terrell, 1902. 
 

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), during her Oberlin College years.
Courtesy Oberlin College Archives.
Mary Church Terrell, women's rights activist, was elected first president of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896, the year the United States Supreme Court upheld segregation laws.


Chemistry Laboratory, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, established in Virginia in 1868, was the model for Booker T. Washington's philosophy of practical education.
Solomon H. Thompson Collection, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries.

Education was at the center of the debates between Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), and W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963). Booker T. Washington viewed practical education as the best means of African American advancement. W.E.B. DuBois believed leadership depended on university educated African Americans, known as "the talented tenth".
Courtesy Amistad Research Center.

 
Booker T. Washington


W.E.B. DuBois

Kansas schools for industrial training included Western University (1863-1943), Quindaro (Kansas City, Kansas) and Kansas Vocational School (1895-1955), Topeka, Kansas. The Central Congregational Church of Topeka initiated one of the first kindergartens for African American children in Kansas.
Courtesy Doris Larkins Collection, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries. Courtely Minus Gentry, Collection, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries. Courtesy John and Pearl Temple Collection, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries.


Western University


Kansas Vocational School

Sheldon Kindergarten