Print edition: 
An exhibit opening today at the Kansas African American Museum examines the experience of black students during segregation in Wichita public schools.
The exhibit, "Separate is Not Equal," is a collaboration between the museum, McCormick School Museum and the Wichita Branch NAACP.
It is the result of a two-year project directed by Wichitan Galyn Vesey, project director for Research on Black Wichita: 1945_1958. It looks at segregation's influences — good and bad — on Wichitans.
"This is a different era that we live in now," Vesey said. "I grew up in Wichita where, despite segregation, there were strengths and positives in the black community. There was a sense of accountability and of social action and values that I'm not sure are present in the same way now. There is more anonymity now and less unity, and you may not always know who is living next door to you."
Documenting Wichita's black community, Vesey said, included research on the meeting records of the Wichita Board of Education from the earliest handwritten volumes of 1873 through typed pages from 1958.
The exhibit examines how an 1879 Kansas law permitted segregated elementary schools in cities of at least 15,000.
Although several black families had settled in Wichita by the late 1870s, it wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that Wichita school administrators began to address the segregation issue.
The exhibit includes photographs and artifacts from the McCormick School Museum, including a double desk used in Wichita public schools before 1889.
By 1906, the school board voted to designate Park and Emerson schools as places that would house classes and playgrounds for black students.
Six years later, the board voted to build three schools for Wichita's 517 black students — the Douglas, Grand and 18th Street schools.
"You see the factors that ultimately paved the way toward separate schools," said Paul Oberg, curator of McCormick museum. "You see how seemingly innocent decisions regarding finance and the economy ultimately pave the way for separate schools for black children."
The Research on Black Wichita project also involved interviews and focus group discussions with black Wichitans about the years after World War II and leading up to the civil rights movement.
The exhibit opens at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Kansas African American Museum at 601 N. Water. It will remain there through March 20, then travel to the Special Collections at the WSU Libraries from March 22 to May 17 and finally to the McCormick School Museum from May 19 to July 14.
Vesey said it was important to him to do the exhibit and project so that future Wichitans would not forget the impact of segregation.
"I see it as part of my responsibility, along with other community folks, to revisit and bring up the subject matter," he said. "I feel we should take more pride instead of feel defeat and disappointment, especially when you understand how far our people have come over a period of 100 years."
The project was funded by grants from the Kansas Humanities Council, the Wichita Community Foundation, the Kansas Health Foundation and Enterprise Corporation.
