116 n 1854 the fledgling territory of Kansas lay at the very heart of the nation's struggle over slavery. Antislavery newspapers and politicians named the region Bleeding Kansas, and later, after the radical abolitionist John Brown and his men killed five proslavery men with broadswords near Osawatomie, it became known as "the land of John Brown."' A century later Kansas was once again in the public eye, this time as the lead case in Oliver Brown et al. v the Board of Education of ITopeka, Kansas, the landmark Supreme Court case that declared state support of segregated public edu- cation unconstitutional. Kansans were at once angry, embarrassed, and confused that their state was a defendant in the school segregation case, and many plaintively asked, "Why Kansas?" For Paul Wilson, the assistant attorney general who represented the state in the case, the answer to that question was sim- ple: Kansas may have rejected slavery but many of its citizens also endorsed black racism and accepted Jim Crow. "Historically, Kansas law and Kansas society discriminated against blacks," Wilson wrote years after the case was decided, which meant that most Kansans approved of segregation. "Why Kansas?" Wilson replied. "Why not Kansas?"2 Indeed, why not Kansas? Bleeding Kansas and Brown v Board of Education, arguably the two most sig- nificant events in Kansas's history, also are key moments in the long struggle for freedom and racial equality in the United States, and thus they give the Sunflower State an important role in telling the story of that struggle. They also provide a moment to ponder, in this the year of the state's territorial sesqui- Rusty Monhollon, assistant professor of history and political science al Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, earned his doctoral degree from the University of Kansas and has researched U.S. history and the Civil Rights movement. He served as a volunteer for the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka. Monhollon has published articles and papers on the Civil Rights movement. His book, "This is America?": The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas (2002) received the 2002 Edward H. Tihen Award from the Kansas State Historical Society. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, assistant professor of history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has examined various aspects of Kansas Territory, and her article " 'The Free Sons of the North' versus 'The Myr- midons of Border-Ruffianism': What Makes a Man in Bleeding Kansas?" appeared in the autumn 2002 issue o/Kansas History. 1. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 159, 195, 231; Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 6-7; William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 171. 2. Paul E. Wilson, "Brown Versus Topeka—From the Other Side," Kansas City Star, May 27,1979, in "Discrimination—Race So- cial Ethics" clippings, vol. 2, 35-36, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society. See also Wilson, A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 25-26. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 27 (Spring-Summer 2004): 116-33. 117 centennial and the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown deci- the question by furnishing homes for all the colored people sion, how—if at all—the two events are related. Did who can get here."4 But in spite of its free-state heritage, the African Americans use the state's free-state heritage as a migrants sometimes were not welcomed to Kansas any rhetorical and symbolic resource in their struggle for equal- more than in their southern homelands. An 1881 editorial ity? Did whites use Bleeding Kansas to resist those efforts? in the Wilson Echo declared that the state had "done all in Are there lines of continuity between the 1850s and 1950s its power to check the incoming of colored people of the that shed light on the nature of the struggle? Kansas's enig- south spending much money in the effort, but without matic approach to race relations provides a unique oppor- avail. They are bound to come, they say, 'to Kansas, the tunity to answer these questions and to examine the strug- Home of Old John Brown.'"5 Thus from its earliest days gle for racial equality in the state.3 Kansas was something of a paradox for blacks; seeking to The enduring legacy of the free-state movement pro- escape Jim Crow and racism in the South they often con- vided a powerful stimulant for black migration to Kansas fronted both—albeit less virulently and in different in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1879 one white Topekan echoed forms—in the land of John Brown. the concerns of his fellow Kansans when he claimed, Kansas never resembled exactly the Jim Crow South, "Kansas was the territory where the battle for freedom but racial exclusion and clustered housing characterized began. Now it seems that Kansas is destined to decide the state's towns and cities in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries. Like other African Americans in 3. The authors acknowledge that race relations in Kansas were not simply dichotomous but included whites, blacks, Native Americans, and 4. New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate, May 1, 1879, in Hispanics. However, the scope of this article is more narrowly focused on Painter, Exodusters, 231. black/white relations in part because both John Brown's crusade and the 5. "The Colored Exodus," Wilson Echo, April 28, 1881, in "Negro" Brown v Board case were concerned with achieving equality for African clippings, vol. 5-6, 38, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State His- Americans. torical Society. 118 the North, those in Kansas had some of the trappings of across the river in Kansas echoed the Argus's concerns. The equality, but they were not afforded the opportunity and Atchison Squatter Sovereign predicted the "Effects of Aboli- respect that accompany first-class citizenship. The persis- tionism" in the territory: "We copy the following marriage tence of these conditions forced African Americans across of a 'Buck Nigger' to a White Woman. Such occurences the state to continue the struggle for racial justice, a journey [sic] will be frequent here, should the Northern fanatics that began in the state's territorial days. succeed in excluding the institution of slavery."8 While such racial epithets may have been expected he story of Bleeding Kansas is well known and does from a proslavery source, many of the antislavery voices in not need to be retold in detail here. Along with John the territory differed little in tone or philosophy Free-state T Brown, names such as Charles and Sara Robinson, ideology and its national corollary, free-labor ideology, e- Clarina Nichols, James H. Lane, Julia Louisa Lovejoy, and braced free white labor, and the majority of its proponents Samuel L. Adair have achieved historical notoriety because politicked to halt slavery's expansion because of racist of numerous studies that chronicle the sectional tensions rather than egalitarian concerns. For example, Andrew J. that flamed in territorial Kansas.6 These free-state fighters Francis, who settled in Kansas Territory after emigrating and their proslavery adversaries struggled verbally and from his native Ohio, helped organize the "free white State physically in their attempts to control the territorial gov- party," the motto of which was, "slavery before free ne- ernment and thus to determine whether slavery would groes." Francis represented many Kansans when he said, "I exist in the new state. The eventual triumph of the anti- would prefer to have Kansas as a free State, provided there slavery forces determined Kansas's entry into the Union as were no negroes allowed to live in the Territory. If they a free state in 1861, and this victory was and has been a were to be here, I preferred that they should be under mas- source of pride for many Kansans. ters."9 Charles Robinson, future governor of the state, The underside of that victory is the racism that per- might have disagreed with part of Francis's philosophy, vaded the debates over slavery in Kansas and the anti- but he certainly would have identified with the Argus's black sentiment that infiltrated its early legal codes. Ironi- fears of miscegenation. He plainly stated in 1856 that he cally, both proslavery and antislavery settlers used similar was "not a friend of amalgamation of the African and racist arguments to attack one another's politics and anglo-Saxon [sic] or Indian races, and never have been."10 morals. The Weston Argus, a Missouri proslavery paper While free-state and proslavery advocates both were read by many like-minded Kansas settlers, warned its concerned about racial amalgamation they differed over readers in 1856 that if free labor triumphed in Kansas, then how slavery contributed to miscegenation. Freestaters racial amalgamation, or sex between blacks and whites, claimed that slavery facilitated racial mixing, in part be- was sure to result. The editors wrote, "Free Kansas! Free cause it gave white slaveholders free and uncensored ac- Niggers! And Fremont. Black Republican Ticket. cess to sex with their female slaves. Robinson articulated UNADULTERATED NIGGER!" The Argus claimed that the this idea and argued that "negro slavery is the principal election of Republican presidential candidate John Charles cause of this amalgamation in the United States, [and] is to Fremont would unleash the sexual energies of Indians and blacks in the region and taint the pure white blood of Mis- sourians and Kansans.