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B.O. Butler Sr., left, is interviewed by Oloye Adeyemon, right.
NPS Photo
The oral history project at Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park contains interviews dating back to 1991. The project continues collecting interviews. If you are interested in participating, please use the "contact us" link at the bottom of this page.
For more than 30 years the program has preserved important information about the Brown v. Board of Education, Briggs v. Elliott, Bolling v. Sharpe, Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart, and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County cases. More than 330 tapes from interviews, totaling over 230 hours, have been preserved.
The completed interviews allow the park to document the stories of plaintiffs — along with their family, friends, and neighbors — attorneys, activists, historians and other people involved with the court cases. The broad range of people interviewed helps paint a more complete picture of the impact these cases had on American society.
These interviews, previously only available physically through the park research library in Topeka, have now been digitized. Park staff and volunteers are working on finalizing the digitization process, and completed interviews will be posted as they become available.
ORAL HISTORIES
Liberty Hill Colored School, Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina)
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South Carolina: Named for Harry Briggs, one of twenty parents who brought suit against the president of the school board for Clarendon County, South Carolina, the Briggs v. Elliott case represented the failures of "equalization" and appealed to the US Supreme Court to be heard alongside Brown v. Board of Education.
John Philip Sousa Middle School, Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.)
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Washington, D.C.: One of the four cases heard alongside Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe presented a unique situation in the challenge to racial segregation in schools. Due to the District of Columbia not being a state, the NAACP couldn't rely on the 14th Amendment in its argument. Rather, the court decided the case based on the equal protection clause in the 5th Amendment.
Hockessin Colored School #107C, Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart (Delaware)
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Delaware: One of the four cases heard alongside Brown v. Board of Education, Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart was the only case of the five which decided in favor of integration, but was appealed to the US Supreme Court by the state.
Monroe Elementary School, Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas)
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Kansas: The Brown v. Board of Education case provided the NAACP the chance to argue the impact segregation itself had on school children, rather than the resulting physical inequalities of resources provided. The other four cases were bundled alongside Brown and heard by the US Supreme Court together.
Robert Russa Moton High School, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia)
Courtesy Photo
Virginia: The site of the student-led strike, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was one of the four cases bundled alongside Brown v. Board of Education and heard by the US Supreme Court.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, Topeka, Kansas
NPS Photo
In addition to the oral history interviews that have recorded memories about the communities that contributed cases decided by the US Supreme Court in 1954, the park also houses interviews recorded in the research process for the park's administrative history. Nineteen interviews with community members, NPS employees, site superintendents, and the Brown family document the creation of the park in 1992 and its evolution to the early 2020s.
