[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 62 (Thursday, May 6, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E774-E776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO THE LATE CORINTHIAN NUTTER
______
HON. DENNIS MOORE
of kansas
in the house of representatives
Thursday, May 6, 2004
Mr. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the
Brown vs. Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education decision, I rise today to
note the recent passing of a civil rights pioneer who resided in the
Third Congressional District of Kansas.
Corinthian Nutter, an African-American teacher whose rejection of
degrading conditions in her Kansas school during the 1940s led to an
important role in our nation's desegregation struggle, died on February
11th at her home in Shawnee, Kansas, at the age of 97.
Nutter was an important witness in a 1949 lawsuit that helped open
the courthouse doors for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the
landmark 1954 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated
schools unconstitutional. A Texas native, she was the only certified
teacher at Walker Elementary School in Merriam, Kansas, in the late
1940s. Only black children attended Walker, where eight grades studied
outdated textbooks in two classrooms in a run down school lacking
indoor plumbing.
In 1947, administrators in school district No. 90, which included
Merriam, built a new school with the proceeds of a $90,000 bond
election. Unlike Walker, the white students-only South Park Elementary
School had indoor plumbing, an auditorium and a cafeteria. It also had
one teacher and one classroom for each of its eight grades, along with
a music teacher and a kindergarten.
When the black parents of Walker Elementary School demanded that
their children be admitted to the new school, the school district
leadership refused, contending that enrollment was based on the
attendance areas drawn for each school. A local NAACP chapter then
aided the families in filing suit against the school system,
while Nutter, who received only a small financial stipend from the
NAACP for her work, taught 39 children whose parents withdrew them from
Walker for the duration of the trial.
In 1949's Webb v. School District 90, the lawsuit filed on behalf of
the 39 families, Nutter was the key witness, detailing the many
inadequacies of the separate and unequal facility. ``I just told them
the truth,'' Nutter said in an interview with the Kansas City Star in
2002. ``The school was dilapidated. We had no modern conveniences, had
to go outside to go to the toilet. . . . Schools shouldn't be for
color. They should be for the children.'' The NAACP's victory in this
case paved the way for the Brown decision five years later.
After the Webb decision, Nutter moved to nearby Olathe, Kansas, where
she taught and later became principal at Westview Elementary School,
despite being the only African-American on the school's staff for
decades. After retiring from education in 1972, Nutter received the
YWCA of Greater Kansas City's first Racial Justice Award for 2003, was
named to the Rosa Parks Wall of Tolerance, and was inducted into the
Mid-America Education Hall of Fame at Kansas City, Kansas, Community
College.
Mr. Speaker, I am placing in the Congressional Record two recent
articles concerning Corinthian Nutter: an article from the Kansas City
Call regarding her induction into the Mid-America Education Hall of
Fame and her obituary from the Kansas City Star. I am pleased to have
this opportunity to pay tribute to this important, yet unheralded,
resident of the Third Congressional District of Kansas.
[From The Call, Oct. 17, 2003]
Civil Rights Leader Corinthian Nutter Into Education Hall of Fame
(By Alan Hoskins)
Corinthian Nutter knew at an early age she didn't want to
follow in her mother's footsteps scrubbing floors.
But no one could ever foresee the profound effect she would
have on the world of education and her deserved induction
into the Mid-America Education Hall of Fame at Kansas City,
KS, Community College November 1.
The third of five children born 96 years ago in Forney,
Texas, Mrs. Nutter realized early that she wasn't going to
get much of an education--particularly when she was held out
of school when the cotton got ripe. Her mother, who scrubbed
floors and took in white people's washing, never saw the
inside of a school. Her father was the uneducated son of a
slave who lived to 102.
``I could see I wasn't going to get much schooling,'' says
Mrs. Nutter, who married at age 14 because ``nice girls
didn't run away from home.'' When the marriage fell apart two
years later, she fled Texas but not before taking a course in
beauty school.
`` I wanted to get enough education to get me a good enough
job to get others to do the
[[Page E775]]
things I didn't want to do,'' says Mrs. Nutter. Moving to
Kansas City at age 16, she got a job in a beauty shop and set
out in pursuit of that education although it wasn't easy.
Segregation still prevailed so to earn a high school
diploma, Mrs. Nutter would get on a bus in Kansas City, MO,
and ride to the end of the bus line on Quindaro in Kansas
City, KS, and then walk another mile or two to what then was
Western university. She graduated from high school in 1936
and two years later finished Western's junior college program
with a Kansas teaching certificate.
She began her career teaching in an all-black school with
just one other teacher in Shawnee in 1938. After five years,
she moved over to Walker Elementary, a run down two-room
school for black children in Merriam.
In 1948, South Park Elementary school was opened at a cost
of $90,000. With an auditorium, cafeteria, separate teachers
and classrooms for each grade and indoor plumbing, it looked
like a castle compared to Walker, which was without indoor
plumbing. South Park's only shortcoming: it was open only to
white students.
When one of the Walker parents, a domestic worker in the
home of a woman named Esther Brown, told Mrs. Brown of the
inequalities of the schools, Mrs. Brown became enraged and
suggested they sue--which was just what happened after the
formation of a local NAACP chapter that helped organize the
parents and file suit against the school district.
To give even further substance to the suit, 39 of the 41
Walker families took their children out of school and Mrs.
Nutter went with them. While the suit crept slowly through
the judicial system, Mrs. Nutter continued to teach the
children in private homes. The new NAACP branch paid her a
small monthly stipend and parents sold cookies on weekends to
help but Mrs. Nutter said she would have done it for nothing.
``It was the right thing to do,'' she said.
When the suit finally came to trial, she was a key witness
in the watershed desegregation case, Webb vs. School District
90. ``I told them the truth,'' she said. ``The school was
dilapidated. We had no modern conveniences, had to go outside
to go to the toilet. If they were going to build a new school
and the parents were paying taxes like everybody else, why
couldn't their children go? Schools shouldn't be for a color.
They should be for children.''
Triumph was finally achieved in 1949 and would pave the way
for other legal challenges including the historical Brown vs.
Topeka Board of Education in 1954. Now the home of the
Philadelphia Baptist church, Walker Elementary still bears
a historical marker that serves as the lone testament to
its place in history.
After a year and a half earning a Bachelor of Science
degree at Emporia State, Mrs. Nutter would return to the
classroom but this time as principal in an all-black school
in Olathe. When Olathe integrated a few years later, she
became principal at the district's newest school, Westview,
although for several years she was the only person--staff or
children--of color. Returning to the classroom to teach sixth
grade and then fifth grade, she retired from teaching at age
65 in 1972.
As the only black in the school, she received some
resistance from parents but her teaching ethics earned her
the love of her students and some of the same parents who
originally questioned her later tried to get their children
into her class.
The list of her former students is as impressive as it is
long and often as not, the first person those former students
look up when they get back in town is Mrs. Nutter. ``Many of
them are grandparents but I still call them kids,'' she says.
During her 25 years of teaching, she would continue her
education by taking summer classes at Emporia State and
earned a Masters degree in 1956. ``I was always working
towards something all those years,'' says Mrs. Nutter, who
learned that she was only three hours and a dissertation from
a Ph.D during Emporia State ceremonies honoring her last
year.
Despite her advancing age, she's still active in several
organizations including the Alpha Kappa Sorority, the Mu
chapter of Beta Omega, NAACP and her lifelong church, Paseo
Baptist. A proud member of the American Association of
University Women, she continues to drive and refuses to walk
with a cane because she said she's ``too modest'' to use one.
She's received countless awards including the YWCA of
Greater Kansas City's first Racial Justice Award for 2003 and
is featured prominently in an exhibit at the Johnson County
Museum. A widow, her husband of 57 years passed away in 1998.
No story on Corinthian Nutter would be complete without
that of her arrival in Kansas City at age 16. ``I was so
ignorant when I got here,'' she recalls. ``I didn't know
anyone so I called the YWCA at 19th and Paseo. They said they
didn't keep girls but if I got a taxi and came over, they'd
try to find me a room.''
During the next several years until she could get her own
apartment, she lived in the home of Willie Mack Washington,
his wife and mother. Washington was a drummer in Bennie
Moten's famous orchestra and Mrs. Nutter soon became fast
friends with Moten and a young player in his orchestra named
William (Count) Basie.
``They took me into their family and I got to go to all the
dances because I was with them,'' remembers Mrs. Nutter.
``Count Basie was the piano player and we had a ball. Later
on, my house became a party house and everyone would come to
my house. Everyone had a piano then, it was the first thing I
bought. I wished I had a nickel for every time Court Basie
played my piano.''
Looking back on her long career, Mrs. Nutter doesn't
believe she ever did anything special. ``I appreciate people
thinking about me. I always felt you should choose something
that's best for you and do it right.''
As for scrubbing those floors like her mother? Never
happened. ``I've never scrubbed a floor in my life,'' she
proclaims proudly.
Open to the public, tickets for the gala dinner and
induction festivities Nov. 1 are $55 and can be reserved by
calling the Endowment Association at KCKCC (913-288-7632).
____
[From the Kansas City Star, Feb. 12, 2004]
Civil-Rights Leader Nutter Dies at 97
(By Finn Bullers)
Corinthian Nutter, a civil-rights pioneer who helped to
desegregate Merriam schools years before the historic Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, died Wednesday night.
She was 97.
Humble and self-effacing, she was known to many friends,
admirers and former pupils as simply ``Miss Nutter.''
She was the only certified teacher at Walker Elementary,
Merriam's school for black children in the late 1940s. The
building was old and lacked indoor plumbing, and the students
made do with books and supplies discarded by other schools.
Things reached a tipping point when School District 90
constructed a new building, South Park Elementary, for white
pupils nearby. Stung by the inequity between Walker and South
Park, the African-American community in Merriam rallied
together, forming an NAACP chapter and suing School District
90 in 1948.
When 39 of 41 families with pupils at Walker pulled their
children out of school, Nutter joined the walkout.
Half a century later, one of the Walker pupils, Harvey
Webb, recalled in a magazine interview, ``Had not someone
like her said, `I'm with you, let's do this, I'll hang in
there with you and teach the kids to the best of my ability,'
this might not have happened then.''
Nutter became a key witness in the case of Webb v. School
District 90, and she said in the same magazine article: ``I
just told them the truth. The school was dilapidated, we had
no modern conveniences, had to go outside to go to the
toilet. And if they were going to build a new school and the
parents were paying taxes like everybody else, why couldn't
their children go? Schools shouldn't be for a color. They
should Stands at a be for children.''
With another teacher, Hazel McCray Weddington, Nutter
continued to teach her pupils until the Kansas Supreme Court
ruled in their favor in 1949.
More court challenges to desegregation followed the Walker
victory, culminating in the landmark Brown decision in 1954.
Originally from Texas, Nutter was married at 14 and trained
at a beauty shop. But after the marriage failed and a friend
told her of the good times in Kansas City, she headed north,
arriving in the 1920s at age 16.
She had little education, but she had intelligence and
dreams of a life beyond domestic drudgery and manual labor.
Knowing nobody in town, Nutter turned to the YWCA, which
placed her in an apartment with the family of Willie Mack
Washington, the drummer in Bennie Moten's famous orchestra.
She would become fast friends with Moten and a young Count
Basie, who played piano in Moten's band.
``I got a chance to go to all the dances and hear all the
orchestras that came from out of town,'' she recalled. ``I
got in free because I was with them. And after the dance,
those musicians wouldn't want to go right home and go to bed.
So our house was the party house.''
Despite the good times, she held fast to her dream of
earning an education.
Even though she was older than most of the students, she
eventually graduated from high school in 1936. Two years
later, she completed a junior college program at Western
University in Kansas City, Kan., earning her teaching
certificate.
She began teaching, but also spent her summers attending
Emporia State Teachers College in search of a bachelor's
degree. It took her more than 10 years, but she received her
bachelor's degree in education in 1950, not long after the
South Park decision.
Eventually, she would earn a master's degree and do most of
the work toward a doctorate. She became a life member of the
American Association of University Women.
In 1941, she married Austin K. Nutter, and the marriage
lasted until his death in 1998.
After the South Park case, Nutter spent many years as a
sixth-grade teacher at Westview Elementary School in Olathe.
She also served for a time as principal of the school.
She retired in 1972.
Looking back over her life and the role she played in the
battle to desegregate schools, Nutter was humble about her
role.
``I was just the teacher who could tell the tale,'' she
said. ``I just don't think I've done anything outstanding.''
[[Page E776]]
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