University Daily Kansan, March 5, 1982
Blacks
From page 1
12-year-old black boy who still remembers the fervor with which blacks once supported the Republican Party.
"I was always on the fringes of Blount's campaign," State Rep. Clarence Love said. "I never embraced the Republican party because all members had voted for the abolishment of slavery."
After Blount's first campaign proved successful, he went on to serve three terms as a representative. Among the bills he sponsored was one allowing black interns to operate on which department is University of Kansas School of Medicine, and many others allowing blacks to enter all public places.
Blount's daughter, Williforence Hutchins of Kansas City, Kan., said recently that her father once used her as a "guinea pig" after one of his bills had passed.
To try out the effectiveness of a bill allowing him into private buildings. Blount sent his daughter to the city court.
Until 1930, the Kansas Union was off limits to blacks. Hutchins said, but her father decided she would be a white girl.
"I was like the blacks who later tried to enter in the hospital." Hutchins said. "I got some help there."
Blount believed that through education, blacks would not only gain equality, but also earn it. In a legislative directory from 1933, Blount is recorded as saying:
"No people, regardless of race or creed, can ever be free except as they earn it. Liberty must be earned. It is a waste of effort to thrust it upon anyone unworthy of it.
"But through organization and education, we can develop leadership. And through leadership, my people can be led into paths of decency and wholesome conditions."
A Kansas City law firm called Stevens, Towers, Davis, Jackson and Haley represented
nearly all the black leadership in Kansas for 20 years, starting in 1937.
William Towers, the first of four those black lawyers to become a legislator, served in Topeka from 1837 to 1947. The Republican Towers, a native of Kansas City and graduate of the University of Kansas, sponsored more than 10 bills and resolutions condemning discrimination in employment.
Towers also succeeded in obtaining state money for the rebuilding of Summer High School in Kansas City, Kan- at that time, the only black high school in the state.
He obtained the money at the request of the black people in Wyandotte County, who had tried unsuccessfully to get funds from the Kansas City, Kan. School Board.
Orrin Murray Sr, an 82-year-old Wyandotte county historian, said the black community saw the murders as a reminder.
"If you said that you talked to William Towers about something, or if you'd told to Dr. Blount about something, everybody just took it for granted that it was true." Murray said.
A colleague of Towers', Myles Stevens, served in the Legislature for four years starting in 1949. Stevens, a Republican, was a native of Tennessee and graduate of the KU School of Law.
Like Towers, Stevens concentrated most of his lawmaking efforts on providing fair employment practices. Although bills prohibiting discrimination in employment had been passed before the rule was enacted, he managed to form a state commission to watch over employment practices in Kansas.
In 1987, a new trend in black legislators began when Curtis McClinton was elected from Sedgwick County. Besides being the first black legislator since Alfred Fairfax to come from a county other than Wyandotte, McClinton was the last to run successfully on the Democratic ticket.
McClinton, who son was a football star both at KU and with the Kansas City Chiefs, taught
A former vice-president of the Kansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, McClintoon sponsored bills that guaranteed the civil rights of all Kansans.
school and sold real estate in Wichita, where he is now retired.
During that time, a chircopractor from Kansas City served two terms and left the Legislature. The chircopractor, Eldred Browne, came to Kansas in 1948 from his native British West Africa.
According to Clarence Love, who calls himself the black historian at the Legislature, other legislators always listened to Browne "because he strangled," referring to his Caribbean accent.
Another Kansas City lawyer, James Parker Davis, became the seventh black man to serve in the Legislature. A Democratic representative for Topeka, he was elected to a three-year term that no black man before or after him.
He fought for decent housing for blacks, as well as for prohibition of discrimination in motels and hotels. But Davis was a prominent legislator in issues other than civil rights.
"He was a bit aggressive," Love said about him. "But if history was fair, Davis would go down as one of the great legislators in the history of Kansas."
Davis died in Kansas City, Kan., in 1979.
The fourth legislator to come from the law firm in Kansas City was George Haley, a Republican. Haley and McClinton broke a new barrier for blacks in 1965 by winning seats in the Kansas Senate. Until that year, blacks had served in only the House of Representatives.
Haley, whose brother, Alex, wrote "Roots," served in the Senate from 1965 through 1986 before moving to Washington D.C., where he now practices law.
Two of the four black legislators now serving in Topkape were first elected in 1867. Clarence Todd was first elected in 1912.
However, McCray was elected to the Senate after his sixth year as a representative. McCray, an industrial photographer, is now the only black in the Kansas Senate.
Love, who runs a dry-cleaning service in Love,
now not is in his 10th year as a representative.
During the 1970s, more blacks served in the Legislature than in any previous decade. After the 1972 election, a record five seats were held by blacks in Topeka, three of them newly elected.
Theo Cribs, a sheet metal mechanic from Wichita, joined the Democrats in the House of Representatives, as did Eugene Anderson, an electronics technician also from Wichita.
Cribbis still serves in the House, while Anderson has joined the state's Commission on Education.
Also new to the house that year was Norman Justice, Justice, a labor official in Kansas City, is being promoted to superintendent.
The number of blacks in the Legislature jumped to six after the 1974 election, which sent five blacks to the House and returned McCray to the Senate.
The only new face after that election was William Marshall, D-Topeka, Marshall, who owns a tailoring shop in Topeka, served one term.
Although Anderson and Marshall did not return to the House after the 78 election, the number of blacks in the Legislature remained at 24. B. Liegeloh and Robert Caldwell were elected.
Caldwell, a Democrat, was the first black to be elected from Salina. A former mayor of Salina, Caldwell served one term in Topeka and was an alumnus of the 18th class lectator to be elected in Kansas.
Littlejohn, a Republican from Topeka, was reelected in 1978 and 1980, but he resigned last year to accept a job with the Housing and Urban Development office in Kansas City, Mo.
No black woman has served in the Legislature.
Speech
HE SAID that three or four professors already were leaving the department.
"Political science just is in very, very, very dire straits," said Robert Lineberry, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a political science professor.
The department has stopped subsidizing its faculty's in-state travel expenses, has cut mailing and long-distance phone calls by 10% to students pay for photocopied materials.
The department of chemistry also must spend a lot of money on sunlilies for experiments.
"What we see is a slow deterioration in the quality of supplies and instruments," Martin Harmony, chairman of the department of chemistry said.
The department has 34 percent of its $24,900
OOE budget left, Jack Rose, the department's
chief financial officer.
Many chairmen they would wait to see how much money they had left in a month or so before deciding whether to ask the College for supplemental funds.
Norman Saul, chairman of the department of history, said he probably would ask the College for supplemental funding at the end of the year. The college has spent about 80 percent of its £29.26 budget.
Thomas Weiss, chairman of the department of economics, said he also might seek supplemental funding.
Patton and Schumaker said they had not asked supplemental funding because the College had no.
For now, most chairmen said they would rely on the budget-tightening measures already
"We've cut all the corners we can," Lacy said.
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