Topeka Museum Captures Brown Legacy

By Mark Walsh

Topeka, Kan.

The Monroe School building bore a large "For Auction" sign in 1990, when a staff member of the Brown Foundation for Educational Excellence drove by one day.

For decades, Monroe was one of four segregated grade schools where the Topeka board of education assigned black schoolchildren. The building had been through many permutations since it closed in 1975: a warehouse, a church meeting place, a clothing-distribution center. It had even housed a dentist’s office. Its long-term future was a question mark.

But the Brown Foundation would soon embark on a mission to preserve a local and national historic site. And next month, years of effort to restore the Monroe School will culminate in its dedication as a museum depicting the story of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case and related battles for...