The Long Walk Home

They didn't choose Central because of its long tradition of athletic dominance, Benson says. "I don't think we even knew that," he says. "I think we might have known they had a good basketball team, but that didn't really factor into our decision." Instead, their logic was based on the need of both the school and the Classical Greek program for a new building to house facilities for the breadth of athletics it would offer -- swimming, diving, gymnastics and fencing, in addition to traditional sports.

At first, the prospect of a new building and supercharged academic programs thrilled the Central community. "I thought it was a fantastic idea," says coach Bush. "I felt that by getting facilities that were equal or comparable to other schools', maybe now we could finally get some things cooking."

"We felt for once like our community was getting something that would really make difference," says Sandra Beasley, who was then an assistant principal. Beasley joined other educators and people from the community on a task force to plan the new school. But the group was hamstrung. Members had to work within the parameters of the desegregation plan, and that left basically one goal: Bring whites to the school.

Beasley says it was a mistake not to try to tap the forces that had previously rallied around Central. Looking back, she says, "One of the mistakes we have made in this district is not capitalizing on some of the talent that was already here. The people with the true commitment. We brought in people who didn't have any urban experience and we let them out-talk us."

Art Rainwater, who was Central's principal then, concedes this might have been a mistake. "Of course, the times were different then," he explains. "You didn't have the same emphasis on parental involvement that you do today." But Rainwater says his ultimate goal was to build a community of support among the parents whose kids attended the school. The members of that community might not have lived next door to one another, but Rainwater believes they could have affected students' lives if the magnet plan had been allowed to continue.

The common perception among longtime Kansas Citians, however, is that the plan was inherently flawed because it bused students to scattered sites around the city, helping to erode community bonds already frayed by middle-class flight and the crack epidemic, which hit urban neighborhoods at the same time as the magnet plan.

The neighborhood-as-extended-family experience Ray Wilson had enjoyed as a youth disappeared. "[The desegregation plan] separated our community into individual families," says Dorothy Fauntleroy, a longtime resident of the neighborhood. "Now families don't talk to one another. They don't tell other families' kids to behave."

Benson still defends the plan. "I think they're wrong," he says. "The sentiment is real, and the nostalgia behind the sentiment is real, but the facts on the ground indicate otherwise. That community disappeared between 1968 and 1985." He says that much of the black middle class left the inner-city neighborhood around Central in search of better services in suburban communities. They left behind a highly mobile lower class. The district, he says, has struggled to educate children who are sometimes forced to switch schools several times a year. "The magnet plans, if anything, actually brought stability to the lives of children," he says, because it offered to pick up students wherever they lived and take them to the same school every day.

In late October 1988, a group of protesters gathered on the front steps of the old Central High School carrying signs reading "Flunk the school board!" and "End educational and economic apartheid!"

"We're fired up!" they shouted. "We want our share!"

"This is the beginning of a movement," said Ajamu Webster, president of the local chapter of the National Black United Front.

The movement, which came to be known as the Coalition for Educational and Economic Justice, was sparked in part by the bidding process to supply equipment for Central's computer magnet theme.

Several months earlier, Tandy Corp., the parent company of Radio Shack, sued the school board after it voted to award Newspaper Electronics -- a local black-owned business -- a $1 million contract to install and supply computer stations. Tandy alleged that district officials had improperly handled its bid, making it appear higher than that of Newspaper Electronics when it in fact was lower by $20,000. Jackson County Circuit Judge Donald Mason agreed in a strongly worded decision, calling the district's explanation of the situation "absurd and not worthy of belief."

Board members agreed in a divided vote to award the contract to Tandy. But they also unanimously agreed to rebuke Judge Mason for his heated statements. Two board members complained that the judge's statements hurt the district's efforts to involve minority-owned firms in district business.

At their rally, Webster and his fellow activists pointed out that most of the $200 million the district had spent up to that point in the desegregation case had gone to white-owned firms.