The Long Walk Home

The case was the state's hottest political issue, and Central High School was at the heart of it. Even before students stepped through the front door of the new building, rural newspapers ran stories about its opulence. Dubbed "the ultimate jock school," Central once again drew national attention as reporters from 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe touted its Olympic-sized swimming pool, racquetball courts, indoor track, "sprawling weight room" and computer terminals for each student. The school spent tens of thousands of dollars to send two students to fencing competitions in Germany and Spain. Utility bills approached half a million dollars a year rather than the $61,000 it cost annually to heat the old building.

The state's budget was in crisis. Facing a deficit, Governor John Ashcroft chose to divert funds from other school districts, and his cabinet made sure every taxpayer between St. Louis and Kansas City understood that desegregation in those cities was to blame. During the 1992 race for governor, Kansas City's costly program became a central issue. In TV markets outside Kansas City, Mel Carnahan and his Republican opponent, Bill Webster, aired ads attacking one another's position on the case. On the campaign trail, Webster often referred to Central as "the gold-plated school."

Carnahan rode into office thanks in part to his promise to settle the case and free the state from the burden of paying for it. But he couldn't do it without a major break from the U.S. Supreme Court. By the mid-'90s, the balance of the high court had tipped toward the conservative -- Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for Brown, had been replaced on the bench by Clarence Thomas.

Thomas was no stranger to discrimination. He'd grown up in the deep South. Later in life, on a visit to the Kansas City area, he and a white friend were refused service at a pizza parlor in Johnson County, according to his recently published biography. At a conference prior to deciding the Kansas City case, Thomas looked at his white peers and reminded them of his experiences with racism. "I'm the only one at this table who attended a segregated school," he reportedly said. "And the problem with segregation was not that we didn't have white people in our class. The problem was that we didn't have equal facilities, we didn't have heating, we didn't have books and we had rickety chairs."

On June 13, 1995, Thomas joined four other justices in striking down the underlying premise of Kansas City's desegregation case, ruling that Judge Clark had overstepped his constitutional authority by mandating a costly network of schools aimed at attracting white students. "It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominately black must be inferior," Thomas famously wrote in his concurring opinion. At one point in his long written opinion, he could easily have been talking about the old Central: "Black schools might actually benefit blacks because they can function as the center and symbol of black communities, and provide examples of independent black leadership, success and achievement."

Three years later, after a long settlement process in which the state bought its freedom for $320 million, Central reverted to being a neighborhood school. During its ten years as a magnet, it had made some strides toward integration -- before becoming a magnet in 1988, Central had just one white student; by 1993, it was 20 percent white. "It was fantastic," coach Bush says of Central during the height of the desegregation action. "I saw some mighty fine fencing expeditions. It was just beautiful and then -- boom! -- when you cut off all the funds, it just goes away."

Fencing and racial mixing aside, Central never really improved where it counted most: student achievement. In 2001, state officials descended upon the school and declared it academically deficient.

Danielle Hicks, a recent Central graduate, says that dishonor doesn't tell the whole story about the school. She finished near the top of her class and earned a scholarship to the University of Missouri in Columbia. She values the time she spent at Central. "As a matter of fact," Hicks says, "what I learned in my ... history classes at Central has led me to hate going to my political-science class here at MU. It's just boring!"

But she concedes that she was more ambitious than most of her peers and that her teachers could have done more to challenge her. "I think that Central babied me a lot," Hicks says. "With some teachers, if I didn't want to do something, I didn't have to."

Her prescription for the school is nothing new. Like others before her, she believes Central needs to rebuild the pride and community involvement it used to enjoy. "Parents are going to have to become more involved in their children's education," Hicks says. "The reason that many of Central's students don't care is because their parents don't care."

Even Central's brightest students lament the lack of community pride and support for the school. "Our generation sucks, school-spirit-wise," says Brandon Dial, a member of Central's highly competitive debate team. "There's just not enough kids around who care. Like spirit week -- no one participates any more. I've looked at pictures in old yearbooks. It's nothing compared to what it used to be."