Brown v. Board offers lessons for today's students

05/04/04 -- Fifty years ago might seem like ancient history to today's students.

But as the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., decision approaches, school leaders in the five communities that had desegregation lawsuits combined into the decision are holding numerous events to commemorate Brown and remind students of the civil rights struggles of the past five decades.

In addition to Topeka, the other cases were in Washington, D.C.; Clarendon County, S.C.; Milford, Del.; and Prince Edward County, Va.

In Topeka, the former Monroe School is reopening as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. Artwork by Topeka K-12 students on the topic, "Brown v. Board of Education: Changing the Face of the Nation," will be displayed in the building.

The district is also sponsoring a high school essay contest on the topic, "How Brown v. Board Has Affected Me," and expects up to 400 people to participate in a 10-mile heritage bicycle ride through downtown Topeka May 15 with stops at significant sites.

Five students will be selected to represent Topeka Public Schools at the Brown v. Board Plus 50 celebration at New York University in New York City May 17-19.

Students at John Philip Sousa Middle School in Washington, D.C., are studying Bolling v. Sharpe, a desegregation lawsuit that began at Sousa and was rolled into Brown.

In 1950, a group of black parents sued the school system after school officials refused to let them enroll their children in what was then brand-new John Philip Sousa Junior High School, despite several empty classrooms.

Elizabeth A. Davis, a current teacher at Sousa, told the Washington Post her students were particularly interested in a recent decision to designate the school a historic landmark. That curiosity "prompted me to seize a teachable moment to engage them in researching, reading, writing, and reflecting on the civil rights movement," she says.

On April 24, D.C. public school students presented museum-style exhibits, multimedia documentaries, research papers, and performances on Brown and other related historical topics at Howard University.

Several graduates of Howard's law school had been attorneys in landmark desegregation cases in the 1950s, and in February the university invited high school students to a special Law Day program on Brown.

In the Clarendon County, S.C., school district, some students undertook writing projects that included interviewing descendants involved in Briggs v. Elliott, another case consolidated into Brown.

Millford (Del.) High School held an assembly in commemoration of Brown in February. School board President Marvin Shellhouse, who was a student at the time, and Orlando Camp, one of the 11 African American students who was a plaintiff in the original lawsuit, participated in a panel discussion. They recounted their high school experiences and discussed the implications of the ruling.

Ed Key, a former Millford school board president, chose "Integrating Millford Schools" as the topic of his master's thesis, says Superintendent Robert D. Smith. "This paper has prompted many of our students to write papers for the district's annual history day and to conduct interviews with people from that time."

On May 15, the district will dedicate a new state-of-the-art school on the site of a former black school. "We are keeping the name, Benjamin Banneker, who was a member of the class of 1957, in honor of the civil rights leaders in our community," Smith says.