May 19, 2018 3 min read

In last week’s lesson, I wrote of the long-overdue 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which rightly ended forever the pernicious system of racial segregation in our public education system.

But as I also wrote, in Brown the Supreme Court made one terrible mistake. It focused on the equal rights of black students, but ignored those of black teachers. In Brown’s ruling, teachers are mentioned only once, so while whites-only schools were subsequently integrated to accommodate black students, black teachers found themselves out of work, including the teachers in the all-black Monroe school in Topeka that was at the center of Brown. Additionally, in the decade after Brown, several hundred thousand black teachers across the country were fired.

Then there were the eight schools in the small town of Moberly, Mo., 150 miles east of Topeka, of which one, Lincoln Elementary, was all-black. Therefore, to comply with Brown, Moberly integrated its schools, but did so by busing black kids to the seven white schools, while closing Lincoln and firing its 11 black teachers.

The teachers sued, noting the comparable test scores of their students proved they were just as qualified as their white counterparts. Indeed, they argued, given how few professional career opportunities were open to blacks at the time, the best and brightest of them had gravitated to educational careers. The Moberly school board responded, maybe so, but “Intangible factors such as personality, character, disposition, industry and adaptability vitally affect the work of any teacher.” (There was also the “intangible factor” known as racism.) The teachers lost their suit, so they appealed, and lost again, so they appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear their case.

One thing that angered these fired teachers was one of their colleagues, Mary Timinee, had a graduate degree in education, as well as several citations for outstanding educational performance. In response, the school board superintendent said, you are right, but she has another problem. She seems to think she is better than everyone and seems resentful toward authority (the fact that she really was better than most white teachers and still got fired would explain her being resentful). Translation: We are not about to hire an uppity negro.

Meanwhile, back in Topeka, as a sop to the fired black teachers at Monroe, the school board decided to hire one black teacher on a part-time basis in one of the white schools, but when the school board notified the white parents of this decision, they were outraged.

One parent noted his 12-year-old daughter had just begun her menstrual cycle, and therefore it was unthinkable that she be around any black male teachers.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net.