Mrs. Nelson's Class

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board

of Education of Topeka, Kansas that state-sanctioned segregation of public

schools is unconstitutional.

In September 1954, in an Air Force base school near Salina, Kansas, young

African American teacher Mrs. Johnnie Mitchell Nelson became the teacher of

a second grade class of twenty white children. Mrs. Nelson knew, but did her

pupils understand they were making history together?

Through a class roster of persona poems by...