According to this article, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that Topeka USD501 had not fully complied with the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954), which had declared segregated schools unconstitutional. The ACLU was representing 17 children who had attended USD501 schools in 1979 and claimed that some public schools had a serious racial imbalance that the school board had failed to address. The article also discusses how the original Brown decision has evolved and been reinterpreted since 1954. In April 1987 the judge would rule that the Topeka school district had removed all traces of racial segregation, although the plaintiffs would appeal this decision at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
National spotlight again on Topeka as Brown case reopens - 183