When neighborhoods go down, even the best schools usually follow. Such might have been the future for Kansas City's venerable Central High School. Founded in 1887, it was long the city's top all-white school, usually sent half its graduates to college, boasted among its alumni Actor William Powell, Singer Gladys Swarthout, and even baseball's redoubtable Casey Stengel. But after World War II, Central's once prosperous white neighborhood rapidly turned black. When Central integrated in 1955, racial tension reached such a pitch that police cars haunted the premises. One sergeant predicted "a lot worse situation here than they had in Little Rock."
The prediction was wrong. One of the reasons is a cadre of dedicated white teachers whose careers go back to the 1920s—old hands such as Biology Teacher Rebekah Leibengood, English Teacher Virginia Oldham and Coach Harry Slaymaker. Instead of deserting, they stayed on to join several gifted Negro teachers in saving Central. Explains veteran Guidance Counselor Hortense Schaller: "We've fought against letting our expectations drop. We are not willing to accept the idea that because a child comes from a less favorable environment he can't make it. We have not given in one iota."
Racists & Razors. The decision to maintain standards has been a long uphill fight. Soon after integration, white and Negro students began living by gangland rule. Bullies of both races extorted nickels and dimes from younger students; when arguments started, the races closed ranks. To prevent gang fights, teachers patrolled the lavatories, frisked pupils for razors, switchblades, and beer can openers with honed edges. Though officials hushed up the mess for three years, the lid blew off in 1958, when young Negro toughs beat up two white teachers. White students fled the school, and few dreamed that it would ever be good again. Said one teacher as he quit combustible Central: "They don't pay me enough for that."
As Central moved to its present ratio of 90% Negro, tension lessened. "You have most of the problem when you have no definite majority," says able Principal James Boyd, who took over in 1959. "When you have a definite majority, it reduces friction." But that only half explains the story. Even in the majority, Central's Negro students were often dispirited youngsters with little academic ambition. Central had to make them want to learn, and it did.