LAWRENCE, Kan. - As I sat in Prof. Harry Shaffer's "Economics 101" class in 1979 as a sophomore, the KU professor dropped, what was for me, a bombshell. "Lawrence had a public swimming pool called The Jayhawk Plunge," he said. "Anyone in town could buy a day pass and swim there, except black people," he said. For all I knew he was talking about the "Bleeding Kansas" era.
John Brown, from State Capitol mural, Topeka, KansasThen he said something that caused my jaw to drop. "We organized pickets, and protested at The Jayhawk Plunge all through the 1960's," he said. "The pool was finally integrated in 1969," he said.
I was dumbstruck. Just ten years before I had enrolled at KU, Lawrence, Kansas would not admit blacks to the only public swimming pool in town? I thought Lawrence was settled by New England abolitionists, and that Lawrence was different, progressive. What happened to the spirit of John Brown?
Although Kansas was pitched to former slaves as "The Promised Land," and "The Land of John Brown," I knew from growing up in Great Bend that Kansas didn't deliver as promised to thousands of Exoduster families who migrated here starting in 1879.
But Lawrence? Excluding blacks from a public swimming pool in the 1960's?
I guess I was naive. As the decades have passed , I have talked to African-Americans who grew up in Lawrence or went to KU during those days, and I am still amazed. Even Wilt Chamberlain was subject to these forms of discrimination. After he left Kansas, he only came back to Lawrence twice- - once in the 1970's to quietly see his white teammate, Bob Billings, and then in 1998 to have his jersey retired. I suspect that Wilt stayed away from Lawrence for many reasons - not just his guilt over the triple-overtime loss to North Carolina in the NCAA Championship game in 1957.
I wish Wray Jones - a 12 year old African-American who drowned in the Kaw River in 1955 - would have been allowed to swim in a safe place. And I especially wish he had lived to see Bernadette Gray-Little, KU's new chancellor, and Turner Gill, KU's new head football coach. He wouldn't believe it.
So many young people grew up in "Jim Crow" Kansas, and couldn't get out of the state fast enough. Topeka High School graduate Aaron Douglas became the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence native Langston Hughes became the top poet of the Harlem Renaissance. A bitter Gordon Parks left Kansas and became a giant in photography, film and the arts.
It took a lot of reaching out, a lot of healing, for Kansas to win back Gordon Parks. Thanks to efforts by the people of Fort Scott, by the Kansas Arts Commission, by Governor Sebelius and others, Parks reconciled with his Kansas past, as he was buried in Fort Scott. Getting Wilt Chamberlain to come back to Lawrence to have his jersey retired took a lot of persuading, too. Roy Williams, Monte Johnson, Bob Billings and others worked hard to get Wilt to return.
One child of a Kansan, a teenage high school student in Hawaii, Barack Obama, had been led to believe by his white grandfather that Kansas was racially progressive. Obama was living with his Kansan grandparents in Hawaii. His grandfather had told him that they had a black babysitter in Kansas who was "part of the family." Stanley Dunham convinced Barack that he knew lots of black people in Kansas, and that they were his friends.
Searching desperately for his racial identity, Obama made a surprise visit to a see a black man with whom Stanley Dunham played Chess. Obama knocked on the door of
Frank Marshall Davis, his grandfather's "black friend." Obama was torn due to an argument his grandparents had about race.
"Funny cat, your grandfather," said Davis. "You know we grew up maybe fifty miles apart?" he asked Obama. Obama shook his head negatively. "We sure did. Both of us lived near Wichita. We didn't know each other, of course. I was long gone by the time he was old enough to remember anything. I might have seen some of his people, though. Might've passed 'em on the street. If I did I would've had to step off the sidewalk to give 'em room. Your grandpa ever tell you about things like that?"
Obama shook his head negatively. "Naw," Frank said, "Stan doesn't like to talk about that part of Kansas much. Makes him uncomfortable." Davis mentioned the black girl that babysat Obama's mother in Kansas. "You can't blame Stan for what he is...He's basically a good man. But he doesn't KNOW me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He CAN'T know me, not the way I know him."
That day Frank Marshall Davis, an Arkansas City native who had his white classmates put a rope around his neck in grade school - told Obama about the broken promise of Kansas. This was a defining moment for Obama, to realize what it meant for him to be an African-American. Frank Marshall Davis was a journalist and poet. His poetry books are still in print. He told Barack Obama what Kansas was really like, not the candy-coated myth.
When Barack Obama was elected President, I honestly thought we had a "post-racial"
America. I guess I was naive. I quickly learned that there was a lot of underground racism that surfaced after he won, even here in Kansas. But the important thing is that America is headed in the right direction on race, and that we continue to take steps toward "a more perfect union." Chancellor Gray-Lewis, Coach Turner Gill, Welcome to Kansas. Kansas continues to head for the stars, through difficulty.
Sources:
- "Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, KS, 1960." by Rusty L. Monhollon, Kansas History magazine.
- Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Dreams from My Father, Three Rivers Press (1995).
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