Education: Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City

When neighborhoods go down, even the best schools usually follow. Such might have been the future for Kansas City’s venerable Central High School. Founded in 1887, it was long the city’s top all-white school, usually sent half its graduates to college, boasted among its alumni Actor William Powell, Singer Gladys Swarthout, and even baseball’s redoubtable Casey Stengel. But after World War II, Central’s once prosperous white neighborhood rapidly turned black. When Central integrated in 1955, racial tension reached such a pitch that police cars haunted the premises. One sergeant predicted “a lot worse situation here than they had in Little Rock.”

The prediction was wrong. One of the reasons is a cadre of dedicated white teachers whose careers go back to the 1920s—old hands such as Biology Teacher Rebekah Leibengood, English Teacher Virginia Oldham and Coach Harry Slaymaker. Instead of deserting, they stayed on to join several gifted Negro teachers in saving Central. Explains veteran Guidance Counselor Hortense Schaller: “We’ve fought against letting our expectations drop. We are not willing to accept the idea that because a child comes from a less favorable environment he can’t make it. We have not given in one iota.”

Racists & Razors. The decision to maintain standards has been a long uphill fight. Soon after integration, white and Negro students began living by gangland rule. Bullies of both races extorted nickels and dimes from younger students; when arguments started, the races closed ranks. To prevent gang fights, teachers patrolled the lavatories, frisked pupils for razors, switchblades, and beer can openers with honed edges. Though officials hushed up the mess for three years, the lid blew off in 1958, when young Negro toughs beat up two white teachers. White students fled the school, and few dreamed that it would ever be good again. Said one teacher as he quit combustible Central: “They don’t pay me enough for that.”

As Central moved to its present ratio of 90% Negro, tension lessened. “You have most of the problem when you have no definite majority,” says able Principal James Boyd, who took over in 1959. “When you have a definite majority, it reduces friction.” But that only half explains the story. Even in the majority, Central’s Negro students were often dispirited youngsters with little academic ambition. Central had to make them want to learn, and it did.

Filthy Notes. Every child was located in a class or program in which he could achieve a modicum of success—and then spurred to achieve his maximum. Explains Counselor Schaller: “We don’t care if he’s a fast or a slow learner as long as he is made to feel that—at what ever rate he does it—he is succeeding.” A case in point is the 17-year-old Negro girl who arrived from the Deep South two years ago with little faith in herself. “She was a real caution,” recalls Miss Schaller. “She wrote the filthiest notes to classmates I have ever read in my life. She was a truant, always in trouble and right on the brink of being expelled.” Calling her in for a scathing, last-ditch conference, Principal Boyd got the girl to promise to try. She tried, and the results were dramatic. She wound up with sophomore grades of S (superior) and M (medium). Says Boyd: “I don’t think anyone before me had ever given her any reason to believe that she had any potential.”

Equally remarkable was Central’s Star Runner Ernest McCraney, 18. Last year he quit in the middle of a crucial relay race. “You can count yourself out of the state meet,” snapped Coach Slaymaker. “After what you just did, I would rather finish twelfth without you than first with you.” That barb struck home. Last spring Negro Runner McCraney defeated everyone in sight, broke one state record and as captain carried Central’s team to the 1961 city championship.

Personal Challenge. The same hard pitch runs all through Central’s classrooms. “I am very frank with my Negro boys and girls,” says English Teacher Ila Maude Kite, who is white herself and came to Central in 1928. “When I get someone who isn’t doing the work he could do, I say to him: ‘You wanted integration. Now you have it. What are you going to do with it? You have certain new responsibilities, and one of them is to maintain a standard you said you wanted.’ I appeal to their nature, their potential, their pride and their sense of obligation. They respond.”

Last week Central totted up the response with a dramatic report. This June’s crop of college-bound graduates was bigger than in some all-white years. Despite its falling socio-economic level, Central’s youngsters are marching not only into junior colleges but also to Yale, Smith, Vassar, Oberlin and Chicago. “Don’t misunderstand me,” cautions Counselor Schaller. “It isn’t all peaches and cream by a long shot.” But, if Central’s old hands frankly wish they could do better, they know how far they have come. “I could have gone to another school,” recalls Miss Kite, “but it was a challenge to me personally.” Adds Miss Schaller: “When my chance came, I couldn’t go. I’m glad I stayed.”