[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8732-8734]
[From the U.S. 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outdated textbooks in two classrooms in a run down school lacking 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

[[Page 8733]]

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 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,

[[Page 8734]]

     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.''

                          ____________________