De Facto Segregation and Bussing

Chester Lewis asks us, “Do you want to be free?” It is a long held belief in the African American community that education is a way out of the bondage of poverty and into the freedom to choose one’s own future. As the student boards the bus to a new school, each step is the Adinkra symbol that means “the pursuit of knowledge.” The mother stretches her hand toward her child, sending a prayer of safety and protection, as they pursue knowledge in a place their family cannot live.

- Ellamonique Baccus

“The motivation of Black parents to have their children attend ‘integrated’ schools lies in the proven fact that, if a black child is attending school with white children, the black child can be assured to receiving maximum educational benefits, because the School Board isn't going to stunt or short-change white children.”

- Chester I Lewis, Jr.

Kansas law allowed cities in the state to require Black children, ages kindergarten through 8th grade, to attend separate schools based on the color of their skin. Most cities in Kansas, including Wichita, did this. The practice was called segregation.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was against the law in the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education court case. However, it took nearly twenty years for the Wichita school board to integrate its schools. More than 90+% of Black families lived in one area, Northeast Wichita, and the school board kept redrawing school attendance boundaries to prevent children from Northeast from attending schools in other neighborhoods. Chester Lewis, the NAACP, Black organizations, and Black parents often petitioned the school board to end separate schools. In response to a letter from Lewis, USD259 reassigned a small number of Wichita’s Black teachers to predominantly white schools, but that was all.

In January 1966, Lewis flew to Washington, D.C. and filed a complaint with the federal government. He included 300 pages of documentation showing that Wichita still maintained a school system that in fact assigned children to schools according to their race.

The U.S. government investigated Wichita Public Schools from 1967-71. It was the first investigation of school segregation in the Midwest. When the U.S. government said it would withhold $5 million of federal aid to Wichita, the school board agreed to bus Black children to white schools and a small proportion of white children into Northeast schools. Chester Lewis opposed this decision, saying it was unfair to Black families.

An agreement was accepted by the school board for the 1971-72 school year and remained in place until 2008.

For more information, visit the Wichita Public Library's page on Chester I. Lewis.

Follow this link for more resources on segregation in bussing.