• Corpus ID: 157642120

Desegregation at Kansas City's Central High School: Illuminating the African American student experience through oral history

@inproceedings{Poos2014DesegregationAK,
  title={Desegregation at Kansas City's Central High School: Illuminating the African American student experience through oral history},
  author={Bradley W. Poos},
  year={2014}
}

• Bradley W. Poos
• Published 17 July 2014
• History, Education

Central High School, the oldest high school in Kansas City, serves as an example of how radically education in Kansas City, Missouri, has changed over the course of the last 150 years. Beginning as part of Kansas City, Missouri’s, segregated public school system, Central was the city’s first all-white high school and remained as such for the better part of ninety years. In 1955, following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Kansas City, Missouri, School district began a process of desegregation; Central High School’s student population promptly transformed from all white in 1955 to nearly all black in 1962. This project explores the history of Kansas City’s Central High School, investigating how the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s approach to desegregation affected Central High School and in particular, Central’s black students. With an emphasis on oral history, I set out to ascertain the African American student experience at Central High School, especially during the magnet years, 1988 to 1999, a period in which the Kansas City, Missouri School District underwent the most expensive and expansive desegregation remedy to date.