Border States and Civil Rights: Activism Prior to 1955

Early civil rights activism prior to 1954 Brown case is marked by the absence of an intervening agency ororganization associated with the type of mass mobilization found in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and other events in the later civil rights movement. The community action in Topeka, Kansas before Brown illustrates that civil rights actions have always been around, but only recent scholarship of the civil rights movement has brought these seemingly less significant campaigns to the fore ground. The activism in Topeka, Kansas, characterized as indirect action tactics, was organized around primarily local level issues. These local level issues were also historically situated prior to the national push to desegregation which occurred after the 1954 Brown decision

Streetcorner Sociology

Sociology at the University of Kansas is steeped in the ethnographic tradition of tire "Chicago School." This is the result of a continuous exchange of promising graduate students and faculty between the two departments. Dr. E. Jackson Baur is a part of the "Chicago connection." He was awarded the Ph.D. by Chicago in 1942 and was hired as an Assistant Professor by the University of Kansas in 1947. He has been Professor Emeritus since 1983 and still maintains an active involvement in the department. The following is an informal history of Dr. Baur's experiences as a student at Chicago and as a professor at Kansas

Dance as Experience: Pragmatism and Classical Ballet

This essay examines the experience of classical ballet and its relationship to everyday life by drawing upon Dewy's emphasis on the importance of integrating the consummatory experience into everyday life, and the necessity of removing any limitations that prevent it from occurring. How can a regimented, formalized dance form such as classical ballet create a consummatory experience for the artist? How can such a structured art form as classical ballet be ephemeral or related to experience? It might be argued that classical ballet's structure is too rule bound, thus limiting the possibility of experience, vis a vis, modern, exploratory dance. The regimen of classical ballet by its very nature is criticized for limiting the freedom of expression that contributes to a consummatory experience. My analysis will focus on the assertion that classical ballet does not limit experience for the artist. Classical ballet is based on logical patterns and once these patterns become recognizable they express experience. By understanding the individual movements that comprise the patterns we achieve consummatory experience. Traditional or "classic" arts can provide a road map to consummatory experience

Social and Cultural Barriers to Diabetes Prevention in Oklahoma American Indian Women

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of diabetes is disproportionately higher among minority populations, especially American Indians. Prevention or delay of diabetes in this population would improve quality of life and reduce health care costs. Identifying cultural definitions of health and diabetes is critically important to developing effective diabetes prevention programs. METHODS: In-home qualitative interviews were conducted with 79 American Indian women from 3 tribal clinics in northeast Oklahoma to identify a cultural definition of health and diabetes. Grounded theory was used to analyze verbatim transcripts. RESULTS: The women interviewed defined health in terms of physical functionality and absence of disease, with family members and friends serving as treatment promoters. Conversely, the women considered their overall health to be a personal issue addressed individually without burdening others. The women presented a fatalistic view of diabetes, regarding the disease as an inevitable event that destroys health and ultimately results in death. CONCLUSION: Further understanding of the perceptions of health in at-risk populations will aid in developing diabetes prevention programs

Early Civil Rights Activism In Topeka, Kansas, Prior To The 1954 Brown Case

On an early spring day in the city of Topeka, Kansas, a father walked his child to their neighborhood school. His child was refused admission and was instructed to attend one reserved for colored children. The parent filed a lawsuit and sued the Topeka Board of Education, demanding that his child be received and instructed at that school, regardless of race. The case went to the Kansas State Supreme Court where it became a precedent for maintaining school segregation in Topeka and other cities in Kansas. The year was 1902. Despite its outcome, this lawsuit illustrates the local-level issues and distinctive color-line practices that characterized challenges to segregation in Topeka before the civil rights movement. Like the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka some fifty years later, the issues in the 1902 Reynolds v. Board of Education grew out of efforts by the local board of education to maintain school segregation against challenges from African Americans dissatisfied with the status quo. The ongoing legal battles in Topeka revolved around segregation contingencies not addressed in the Kansas state constitution written in 1861. Confrontations over maintaining the color line erupted as public schools began to develop junior high schools separate from elementary schools (which were covered under segregation statutes) and high schools (which were exempt).1 Challenges to the color line also occurred as the city limits of Topeka expanded to incorporate rural communities in outlying areas that had already established their own informal, yet distinctive, patterns of integration and segregation. Each annexation created new fault lines along the color line as its practices were renegotiated as part of the confrontations between real estate developers, city government officials, the board of education, and parents of school-age children. The important role that the community of Topeka played in the events that eventually led up to the famous 1954 Supreme Court case has been underemphasized. This lack of interest might be related to the fact that Topeka, Kansas, was not located in the deep South and did not have the same history of violence in race relations as, for instance, a place like Birmingham, Alabama. There were no spectacular events such as bombings, race riots, mass marches, or boycotts that characterized the mass mobilizations in the South. Little acknowledgment has been given to Topeka\u27s own unique history of race relations and the fact that its subsequent type of resistance to segregation is related to that history. HISTORICAL LEGACY OF RACE RELATIONS Kansas\u27s distinctive color-line practices regarding public education are illustrated by the shift back and forth between integration and segregation in school legislation. Instead of mandating a uniform system of segregated schools, the original constitution left that determination up to local school districts and local custom. This allowed a small window of opportunity for African Americans to establish some legal basis from which to challenge the constitutionality of segregated schools in their own communities. It also gave them the right to appeal to the local board of education to review its policy of segregation if the policy did not conform to state statutes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Topeka did this in 1948, before pursuing the actions that resulted in the Brown case. Challenges to school segregation resulted in modifications to the school segregation laws in 1867 and 1879.

Mid-American Review of Sociology, Volume 15, Number 1 (WINTER, 1991): Book Review

Review of William G. Staples' "Castles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State