Brown Anniversary Observed In Topeka by Bush and Kerry

By Erik W. Robelen

The 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka drew President Bush and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to separate appearances last week in the city where the case originated, even while both said that the decision’s vision of equal educational opportunity had yet to be fulfilled.

"Fifty years ago today, nine judges announced that they had looked at the Constitution and saw no justification for the segregation and humiliation of an entire race," President Bush said during the dedication of a national historic site and museum at the Monroe School in Topeka, Kan., one of four elementary schools in the city once designated for black students.

"Here at the corner of 15th and Monroe, and at schools like it across America, that was a day of justice—and it was a long time coming," Mr. Bush said in a relatively short but eloquent address on May 17 to an audience that included U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, and Supreme Court...