Last updated: October 5, 2024
Person
Lucinda Todd
Quick Facts
Significance:
Civil Rights Activist
Place of Birth:
Litchfield, Kansas
Date of Birth:
May 31, 1903
Place of Death:
Topeka, Kansas
Date of Death:
July 17, 1996
Place of Burial:
Topeka, Kansas
Cemetery Name:
West Lawn Memorial Gardens
Lucinda Todd was a Topeka activist who eventually became the field secretary for the Topeka National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Under the leadership of McKinley Burnett, the branch president, and Todd, this branch protested Topeka’s segregated schools and other forms of racial discrimination in the city. Although their protests were dismissed by the Topeka school board, this branch provided important support for the larger NAACP fight in Kansas.
Todd was also one of the first parents to join the fight against segregation in Topeka’s elementary schools. Todd and other Black parents gathered almost 1,500 signatures on a petition to end segregated schools in Topeka. When the NAACP was gathering plaintiffs to oppose the Topeka School board, Todd was one of thirteen parents who tried to enroll their children in white schools in their respective neighborhoods and who would serve and testify as plaintiffs in the lawsuit that was later known as Oliver L. Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et. al. When her child Nancy, a fourth-grader, was denied enrollment, Todd wrote a letter to the New York NAACP office indicating that the Topeka branch would test the Kansas school segregation law in court.