The Long Walk Home

As Smith returned home through the old Central Park, he says, he "started to see all the craziness unfold." The violence continued for three days, much of it within a block or two of Smith's and Wilson's homes. A massive apartment building just around the corner burned. Wilson says he could feel the heat from it and that flames rose so high that night seemed like day. Smith's brothers went to help firefighters, but he stayed home "on the floor peeking out of the window." At one point, he watched massive troop carriers full of soldiers roll down his street. "I saw the fire coming out of their guns," he says.

"The next day, I saw the businesses burning in my neighborhood," Smith says. "The drugstores and cleaners. It was pretty devastating. You know, you couldn't believe it, right there in your community. I mean, we'd go in there and drink limeades, sitting at the counter."

"We had some radicals," coach Bush says of the uprising. "These kids, these so-called radicals, were brainwashed. These were individuals who in the past had not been of that nature. So we [teachers and administrators] fought it, and eventually we won out. We were just able to convince the kids that what they were listening to from these so-called radicals was poppycock. We were able to persuade the kids that the radicals were idiots."

But that didn't happen overnight. The next fall, a few rogue students attacked two teachers, injuring one severely enough to require plastic surgery. The next spring, punks broke into the school and destroyed records, trophies and typewriters, showered offices with fire-extinguisher foam and ripped phones out of walls. The damage totaled $10,000.

At the beginning of the 1970 school year, Central's security guards came to school wearing guns. When school board members learned of this, they called an emergency meeting. Classes dismissed early so that teachers could show their support for the drastic measures of protection. Some threatened to quit if the guards couldn't wear their guns. But after weeks of community outcry, the guards agreed to disarm.

Then in 1972, a mass brawl erupted after a basketball game between Central and Raytown South. There had long been bad blood between the two schools. Raytown South always paraded a giant confederate flag before games and during intermission -- a tradition that Central didn't appreciate. The two schools were to meet in a state quarterfinals match-up. State activities officials hoped to avert trouble by holding the game in Maryville, a small town an hour to the east.

The game was excruciatingly close. It ended with a goal-tending call in favor of Raytown. Central fans cried "bad call!" while Raytown fans unfurled the Stars and Bars and shouted racist epithets. Central fans stormed the floor, throwing chairs and swinging fists. Though coach Bush and his players tried to stop the fight, the state activities association suspended Central for a year. The stiff penalty brought national attention, and state officials lifted the ban after the NAACP threatened to sue.

"Central had a reputation," Smith admits. "We had some rough crowds that did go to Central."

"That was the thing about this school," Wilson says. "We had an image of sheer terror. There were incidents where we had badasses, no doubt about it. But they were in the minority."

The press, however, tended to reinforce Central's negative image. A 1971 Star article headlined "Chicken as Morale Builder," for example, began by asking, "Will fried chicken in the cafeteria prevent student uprisings at Central high school?" It closed with an obviously out-of-context quote from a black board member: "Is there an expert here who can tell us whether fried chicken is soul food?" Days later, black leaders picketed the Star's office to protest the article.

When Central grad William McClendon returned as a student teacher in 1969, he noticed that "a lot of the expectations [students had been held to] in the early '60s had gone.... The neighborhood had changed."

Statistics back him up. From 1965 to 1968, Central's tenth graders scored lower on standardized tests than the school district's average.

During this period, Kansas City saw the first serious pushes for a comprehensive desegregation plan. These initially arose from the black community's response to overcrowding at Central. The district bused about a hundred kids from Central to other schools, though that was hardly enough to ease the problem. Meanwhile, the all-white populations at Northeast, Van Horn and Southwest remained at their same levels.

In 1968, Superintendent Hazlett released a long-awaited master plan for integrating the district. It proposed busing kids out of overcrowded schools, clustering several segregated elementary schools so their racially diverse student bodies could mix and establishing "magnet" high schools. The magnets would offer specialized curricula (vocational education, fine arts, science) to attract students from all areas of the city. The report also recommended offering multicultural and African-American history courses districtwide. After the riots, Mayor Ilus Davis' Commission on Civil Disorders urged compliance with this plan. But the school board issued a statement that read, "We do not advocate 'bussing' for the sole purpose of integration." In 1971, another city task force pushed for African-themed classes, among other things, but the school board again declined.

In 1973, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference filed a lawsuit to desegregate the high schools. Federal officials applied pressure, threatening to sever funds. The school board responded by adopting an integration plan that affected only 17 of the district's 98 schools. It involved busing about 700 of the district's 65,000 students. Most of the bused kids were black. Unsatisfied, federal officials launched an investigation, found the district guilty of discrimination and withheld millions of dollars.