February is Black History Month. This year, KPR enlisted the help of Shawn Alexander, the director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas, to explain some of the history of the event and some of the most important landmarks in the struggle for equality. While many people know about the importance of the Brown versus Board of Education case, far fewer are aware of a much earlier Kansas-based case that also had a profound legal impact on segregation and the rise of Jim Crow laws.
Shawn Alexander is the interim director of the Langston Hughes Center at KU. For more information on the Center, on African-American history and some of the events planned in connection with Black History Month, visit the Langston Hughes Center on the web, via the ku.edu website.