Wichita’s newest park: a forced marriage of civil rights and medical school | Opinion
.JPG "Wichita’s newest park seeks to blend a tribute to civil rights icon Chester I. Lewis with an entryway to the new osteopathic medical school. The empty frames will include artwork and historical information about Lewis.")
Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square Park is supposed to be a tribute to the long, and in many ways still ongoing, struggle for Black equality in Wichita.
So far, it’s more of a tribute to concrete, steel and plastic grass.
It looks about how I expected it to look, being the forced marriage of a civil rights park and the entrance to a medical school complex.
Chase Billingham, a Wichita State University sociologist and social critic, called it a “profound disappointment” on Facebook and said it’s “depressing, absolutely devoid of life, and completely sterile.”
“Where the city previously had a whimsical public space full of curious statues, full-grown trees, and a beautiful (if poorly maintained) fountain, we now have another swatch of astroturf surrounded by concrete,” he wrote.
I’ve been on the receiving end of some of Billingham’s criticisms, including as recently as last week. But this time I’m leaning toward agreeing with him.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what anyone would actually do in this new park, or why.
There are six backless benches and a couple of other surfaces where the concrete is covered with wooden decking, so the med students can theoretically lounge and study outside when it’s not too cold, too hot or too windy (and we all know how often that is).
Also, today’s students study on computers, but you can’t plug in a laptop. The park has plenty of power outlet boxes, but they’re padlocked and apparently reserved for special events.
The artificial turf is oddly tilted, with too much slope to comfortably exercise or play any game with a ball, but not steep enough to sled down.
Don’t bring your dog. There are signs all around warning “NO PET RELIEF ALLOWED ON ARTIFICIAL TURF.”
A pod of security cameras hovers overhead like a Chinese surveillance balloon.
Granted, the park’s not complete. There’s still much art and information to be installed on what are now empty metal frames. The centerpiece will be a giant map inlaid in concrete showing where Black people used to be excluded from housing.
Council member Brandon Johnson said the city opened the park incomplete so the neighboring businesses didn’t have to deal with a fenced-off lot — and cautions against judging it before it’s finished.
He said additions to the park, expected by August, will make it a much nicer place to relax and reflect on the life and accomplishments of Lewis.
If anybody from Wichita deserves accolades, it’s Chester I. Lewis.
▪ A lawyer by profession, he filed the lawsuit that got Black people allowed to use Wichita city swimming pools.
▪ He filed the federal complaint that started Wichita on the path to desegregated schools.
▪ To break housing segregation, he had a white friend buy a house in a white-only area and sign it over to him, defiantly living there despite threats and the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses in his yard.
▪ He served as the lawyer and mentor for Black Wichita youths who staged what may be the nation’s first successful lunch counter sit-in, that forced Dockum Drug Store and other local businesses to reverse white-only policies.
But the “old” Lewis Park wasn’t really that old. It was built around 2000 and wasn’t named for Lewis until 2007, after some Black youths petitioned the city.
People liked it, especially its signature life-sized sculpture of an integrated lunch counter honoring the sit-in movement. A lot of Wichitans have taken selfies or eaten their lunch at that counter, which will be moved to another park.
The park probably would have served its purpose for decades to come if the new Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine didn’t need an entry plaza. We’re spending just shy of $2 million to make it happen.
I’ll withhold final judgment until I see the finished park. I just hope we don’t wind up with the second-coolest tribute to Lewis in south-central Kansas.
Hutchinson, the city where he was born, dedicated its Chester I. Lewis Plaza in 2020. It’s got plants and trees and vibrantly colored murals.
But they don’t have a medical school.
This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 5:45 AM.
