McKinley Burnett<
Head of the Topeka branch of the NAACP from 1948 to 1963

By Abby Mills, class of 2004

After a lifetime of fighting segregation, McKinley Burnett, then head of the Topeka branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, played a key role in ending segregation in American schools.

Burnett was born in Oskaloosa, Kansas, on May 17, 1897. Discrimination was then a fact of daily life. Burnett wanted to participate in drama in school, but would only be offered parts as a dancer or a butler. Stereotypes led people to assume he could take a dancing part, although he didn’t know how to dance. He also faced discrimination as a soldier in the U.S. Army and a supply clerk at the Veterans Administration. He wrote letters to all levels of government, including the president of the United States, the injustices he faced. In one such letter, he described applying for a job as a driver for a bakery. He said the manager, "told me that he could not hire a Negro for such a job and that such had never even been considered, neither had they had such a request before.

Burnett decided to take a more direct role in the struggle for equal rights when he became head of the Topeka branch of the NAACP in 1948. He decided to focus his energies on desegregating public schools. In 1948, Kansas law permitted, but did not require, elementary schools in cities with more than 15,000 inhabitants to be racially segregated. Eleven attempts to reverse the law had been made since 1881, but Topeka’s schools remained segregated.

After two years of pressuring the Kansas Board of Education to desegregate, Burnett decided to take the board to court. Burnett recruited 13 families to try to enroll their children in white schools. When they were denied, the NAACP filed suit in 1951. Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools, were unconstitutional, even if facilities were equal. The ruling was issued May 17, 1954, Burnett's 57th birthday.

Burnett continued to lead the Topeka NAACP until 1963. He died in 1968.