Brown vs. Board of Education

Leola Montgomery is the widow of the Rev. Oliver Brown, the lead plaintiff in the 1954 landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Montgomery, who is scheduled to be in Wichita on Saturday to receive a special award, doesn’t look one bit of 97. Nor does she act like it.

Sixty-four years ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision to end legal segregation in the public school system as part of the Brown v. Board of Education case. A new mural is being unveiled Thursday in the Kansas Capitol in Topeka to commemorate that landmark decision.

Funeral services were held in Topeka on Thursday for civil rights icon Linda Brown, the schoolgirl at the center of the landmark Supreme Court case that declared school segregation unconstitutional.

Brown v. Board of Education is the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that ended legal segregation in the public school system. That was in 1954. Now a mural commemorating the case will be painted inside the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka.

2014 marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education. However, Brown could have been decided one year earlier, if not for some unusual circumstances that brought the lawyers back to the Supreme Court to argue the case… for a second time.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is coming to Kansas this week.

He has two stops in the state Tuesday. Duncan will be holding a town hall meeting at Emporia State University. He’ll also deliver a speech in Topeka.

Duncan will make a stop in Topeka at the Brown v. Board of Education historic site on Tuesday. Dave Smith is superintendent there. He says Duncan is on a cross-country tour of places with connections to public education.