Sumner High School in kansas-city-kansas was the first legally segregated public high school in Kansas, created by a special act of the state legislature in 1905 after a racial crisis in the city — and for decades the only one in the state. Despite its origin in a segregation statute, Sumner built an unusual academic reputation — an exceptionally credentialed Black faculty and a long alumni list of judges, diplomats, musicians, and Hall of Fame athletes. It closed as Sumner High School in 1978 under court-ordered desegregation and reopened the same year as Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, a competitive-admission magnet school that still occupies the Art Deco building at 8th and Oakland. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Legal background — segregation law in Kansas before 1905

Kansas school-segregation law was permissive rather than uniform: first-class cities were allowed to operate separate elementary schools, but state law required high schools to be integrated. That boundary was tested and confirmed in Reynolds v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas Supreme Court, 1903), brought by William Reynolds, a Topeka tailor, after his son Raoul was refused admission to a newly built school in the Lowman Hill district; the court held for the board, finding that first-class cities could operate separate elementary schools and that the Fourteenth Amendment did not override the Kansas statute.1 Reynolds established the judicial climate in which a further, high-school-level exception could be sought two years later.1 For roughly twenty years before 1905, Kansas City, Kansas High School had been an integrated school.2

The 1904 crisis

On April 2, 1904, Roy Martin, a white student at Kansas City, Kansas High School, was shot and killed at Kerr Park by Louis Gregory, a young Black man who was not a student and was not on school grounds; accounts place the shooting during or after a baseball practice, outside school hours.32 Gregory was arrested, tried with a court-appointed attorney, and sentenced to a prison term.3

The morning after the shooting, Black students arriving at the high school found their entrance blocked by white students and white citizens.2 Contemporary accounts describe the incident being taken up immediately as the justification for a campaign to segregate the high school, notwithstanding that the shooter was not enrolled there.3 Reports that Black residents armed themselves to guard the jail against a lynch mob forming for Gregory appear in secondary retellings but are not confirmed by a source retrieved here.

Founding by statute (1905)

In 1905 the Kansas Legislature passed a bill — cited by the Sumner alumni history as House Bill No. 890 — repealing the integration requirement as it applied to Kansas City, Kansas, and authorizing a separate high school there.3 Governor E. W. Hoch signed it on February 22, 1905, publicly objecting to it as a “step backwards” and a “concession to Southern ideas,” and conditioned his approval on the district building a new high school for African American students with at least $40,000 in funding, “as equally equipped as the existing Kansas City, Kansas High School.”23

The school opened in the fall of 1905 as Manual Training High School with four teachers; community members — ministers, attorneys, teachers, and board members — subsequently met and renamed it for Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts senator and abolitionist.43 The building at Ninth and Washington Boulevard opened in 1906 with J. E. Patterson as first principal, and the first class graduated in the spring of 1906: five young women, Fannie Bradford, Mamie Brown, Myrtle Jackson, Grace Williams, and Nellie Williams.43

Buildings

The original Ninth and Washington Boulevard building became overcrowded, and the school moved to 8th and Oakland (1610 N. 8th Street).25 The present Art Deco complex was designed by Kansas City, Kansas architect Joseph W. Radotinsky and built between 1937 and 1940, with a central streamlined entrance tower and an articulated pattern of two tones of fire-clay brick accented by limestone trim.5 The alumni history dates the move to the new building to January 2, 1940, opening with 24 teachers and 800 students; the district’s own account describes a new Sumner High School opening in 1939 with 32 classrooms, a library, auditorium, gymnasium, and swimming pool.32 A gymnasium, cafeteria, and student center were added in 1975, with later expansions through 2010.45

Academic reputation

Because segregation barred highly educated Black professionals from most other employment, Sumner assembled a faculty far more credentialed than was typical for an American high school of the period: by 1930, 44 percent of its teachers held master’s degrees.3 The school’s long-serving principals — J. M. Marquess (1908–1916), J. A. Hodges (1916–1951), and S. H. Thompson (1951–1972) — gave it several decades of institutional continuity.3 Sumner remained a legally segregated school after the 1954 Brown decision until its closure in 1978.2

Closure and conversion (1978)

Sumner High School closed in 1978 and its students were reassigned as part of court-ordered desegregation. The building reopened the same year as Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, a magnet school for, in the district’s phrasing, “highly motivated and academically talented students.”42 As a magnet, Sumner Academy received U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon recognition in 1984 and 2003, and in recent U.S. News & World Report rankings has been listed as the top-ranked high school in Kansas, with a graduation rate reported at or near 100 percent and an International Baccalaureate program.546 Enrollment was 873 students in 2024–2025.5

National Register listing (2005)

In 2005 Sumner was named to the National Register of Historic Places and to the Register of Historic Kansas Places.45 The nomination is referenced in state records as “Sumner High School and Athletic Field.”

Notable alumni

  • Charles Wilber “Bullet” Rogan (class of 1908) — Kansas City Monarchs pitcher, hitter, and manager; National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.5
  • Harold Hunter (class of 1944) — first African American to sign a contract with a National Basketball Association team.5
  • Carmell Jones (class of 1954) — jazz trumpeter.5
  • Delano Lewis (class of 1956) — attorney, businessman, and United States Ambassador to South Africa, 1999–2001.5
  • Lea Hopkins (class of 1962) — LGBT rights advocate.5
  • Fernando J. Gaitan Jr. (class of 1966) — senior federal judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.5
  • Leonard Gray (class of 1969) — NBA player, Seattle SuperSonics.5
  • Paul Graham (class of 1969) — head coach, Washington State men’s basketball.5
  • William Foster — director of the Florida A&M marching band and president of the American Bandmasters Association.5
  • John McLendon — first African American head coach in any professional sport; Naismith and National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame inductee.5

Significance to Kansas City

Sumner is the clearest surviving physical record of how segregation was legislated into the Kansas side of the metro — not by inheritance from the South but by a specific 1905 bill written for one city in response to one killing. Its second life as Sumner Academy makes it one of the few buildings in the region where the Jim Crow origin and the post-desegregation institution occupy the same walls. Together with quindaro and western-university-kansas, it forms the spine of Black educational history in wyandotte-county, and its alumni roll connects Kansas City to the Negro Leagues, the federal bench, the diplomatic corps, and mid-century jazz.

A common misattribution

Sumner is frequently described locally — including in Kansas City press and alumni material — as the first Black high school west of the Mississippi River. That distinction belongs to Sumner High School in St. Louis, which opened in 1875 and marked its 150th anniversary in 2025.7 The accurate claim for the Kansas City, Kansas school is narrower and still significant: it was the first, and for decades the only, de jure segregated high school in the state of Kansas. The two schools share a name because both were named for the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, which is likely the source of the conflation.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Brown Foundation — “Reynolds v. Topeka.” ↩ ↩2

  2. Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools USD 500 — “A History of Segregation in Kansas Schools, Part I.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. Sumner High School alumni site (Class Creator) — “Our History.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  4. Sumner Academy of Arts and Science — “School History.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Wikipedia — “Sumner Academy of Arts & Science.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  6. KSHB 41 — “Here’s how Sumner Academy earned top rating among Kansas high schools.” ↩

  7. St. Louis Public Radio — “As Sumner High School celebrates 150 years, alumni fight to save its legacy” (2025-08-01). Establishes that the St. Louis Sumner High School opened in 1875 and is the reference point for the “first African American high school west of the Mississippi” claim ↩

See also

Categories
  • Concept
  • Building
  • Kck
  • Black History

On the record — ks.city/wiki/buildings/sumner-high-school