Brown v. Board of Education Mural

welcome hi i'm joe brintano i'm the coordinator of the capital visitors center here in topeka and we are going to talk about the newest mural in the capital the mural the brown versus topeka board of education mural this was installed in may of 2018 on the 64th anniversary of the landmark u.s supreme court case in 1954 that would begin the process of desegregating public schools all over the u.s this image was created by native kansan michael young he's originally from the leavenworth area and this is the first new mural installed in over 40 years he used a lot of the colors in the mural to harmonize with the color palette all over the capitol and there's a lot to see in here so let's begin with that a little background on brown versus board for many people in the various parts of the country there were segregated schools and in topeka we had segregated schools as well so at the top left we have the sumner school and it just so happens that oliver brown and his family live close to this school and so in the early 1950s with the encouragement of the local naacp families were encouraged to enroll in the school closest to their home which makes perfect sense well they were denied well what that means is linda brown has to walk much farther away to attend the segregated monroe school so at the top right of the mural you have the monroe school today incidentally that is a national park site the brown versus board of education museum you can visit and learn a lot about the case there so this case is eventually rolled up with cases from other states the artist has these five flags at the top right there they're south carolina virginia kansas delaware and the district of columbia so all these cases were put together but they're going to list oliver brown as the lead plaintiff because in topeka the schools were pretty much the same so we're trying to compare the equal facilities teacher salaries were competitive and textbooks were up to date so it would be much easier to prove a substandard facility or out of date textbooks but we want to show that example that separate but equal is still unequal there the case would be argued all the way to the u.s supreme court in washington and in the background you have the image of the u.s supreme court it was unanimous in 1954 all nine justices ruled that separate but equal is inherently unequal and that would begin that process of desegregating the public schools all over the u.s as i mentioned earlier there is a lot of imagery in this mural here the focus is really the integrated classroom and that idea that we can all learn together this artist has a lot of wonderful detail in here but i do want to draw your attention to the gentleman in the photo frame on the teacher's desk and he is the attorney thurgood marshall who would argue the case all the way to the u.s supreme court an interesting bit of history it would be thoroughgood marshall who would be the appointed as the first black associate judge on our u.s supreme court later in 1967. so what questions do you have there's really a lot to see in this mural and let us know

Channel: Kansas Historical Society

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Id: p7G3VCmt1-g

Length: 3min 59sec (239 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 03 2021