Cheryl Brown Henderson is much more than her father's daughter.
And while that is the role she is reminded about daily at work, during media interviews, at meetings and lectures, over dinner and at parties, she is very much her own person.
Henderson was born in 1950 in Topeka, the third of three daughters of Oliver and Leola Brown. Oliver Brown became a household name because his name was listed first on the plaintiff roster of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
"Cheryl has always been real concerned that her family's role be explained properly," says longtime friend Carol Vogel. "It wasn't just Oliver Brown. It was a combination of efforts of so many, many people. It was an act of fate that his name drew attention. Cheryl was concerned that the story be told accurately and was cognizant of the role her family could play in history and that it be accurate.
The Brown family, from left, Linda Brown Thompson, Leola Brown Montgomery, Cheryl Brown Henderson and Terry Brown Tyler.
John Nowak/The Capital-Journal
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"There were other cases, other plaintiffs, lawyers, NAACP people involved who should get the appropriate credit. She's very sensitive to that."
Henderson, now 53, went from being uninformed in her growing-up years about the school desegregation case to lecturing nationally about its impact and being a driving force in making the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site at Monroe School in Topeka a reality.
Along the way, she also created the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research. The foundation recently moved into the second floor of Monroe School, a boxy, brick building south of the downtown district that's now the Brown v. Board National Historic Site. It was once one of the four segregated schools for black elementary students.
Monroe School has touched the Brown family in multiple ways through the years.
Henderson points out specific information on the new brochure that has been made for the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
John Nowak/The Capital-Journal
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Henderson's mother, Leola, was a first-grader at Monroe in 1926, and her sisters, Linda and Terry, each attended Monroe for part of their grade school years in the 1950s. Henderson walked in the front door in 1972 as a new sixth-grade teacher.
Moments in time
"I think everybody's life is strung together by moments in time. And what happens or what's happening to you or what conversation you're in or what book you're reading or what experience you're having influences which fork in the road you take," Henderson said, while sitting among the unpacked boxes of her new office. "There are people that assert that from childhood they want to be a physician or a teacher or a firefighter, but I believe the majority of us do not. We're more influenced by those moments in time.
"This is not where I saw myself, coming back to this building, to work and to end my career. Thirty years ago, when I walked into this building on the first floor to teach sixth grade, I was just there in that moment and if someone had walked into the room and said 30 years from now you're going to be back in this building, I don't think I would have taken them seriously."
But she finds herself there again.
Growing up
Henderson was born Dec. 20, 1950, at St. Francis Hospital to Leola, a homemaker, and Oliver, who was a welder at the Santa Fe Railroad in addition to being assistant pastor at St. John's AME Church. She had two sisters, Linda, who was eight years older, and Terry, who was four years older.
She went home from the hospital to the family's home on 1st Street, a house across the street from the home of her maternal grandparents. After three years, the family moved to North Topeka for her father to assume the pastorate of St. Mark's AME Church. The family settled into a home next door to the church and the house on 1st Street was sold. It was razed to make way for the Interstate 70 viaduct.
"It was typical 1950s family life," Henderson recalls. "We came home for lunch during the school day and my mom was there with that evening snack when you came home, and we watched 'Howdy Doody' like the rest of the country. Probably the only thing of note was being a minister's child. There was that expectation of attending church on a regular basis and definitely Sunday school and morning services and evening services."
By the time the Brown family moved to North Topeka when Henderson was 2, her father was already listed on court documents for the school desegregation case.
The ongoing court case didn't really affect the family then. It wasn't talked about in their home. Henderson said once the plaintiffs in the Brown case volunteered and followed the directions of the NAACP to document any refusal or denial to enroll their children in a neighborhood school, their involvement was pretty much over.
"Life for everyone went back to normal," she said.
Oliver Brown was called once to testify in a federal court hearing in Topeka, as were several of the other parents. Other than that, "work went on, school went on, church services went on and life went on," Henderson said.
Going to school
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Cheryl Brown Henderson
Age: 53
Position: President and chief executive officer of Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research. Owner of Brown & Brown Associates, an educational consulting firm, and an associate with the Westerly Group, a public advocacy firm in Washington, D.C.
Born and reared: Topeka
Education: Bachelor's degree in elementary education with a minor in mathematics from Baker University, a master's degree in guidance and counseling from Emporia State University, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Washburn University.
Professional background: Teacher and guidance counselor out of college, then worked for the Kansas Department of Education. Founded the Brown Foundation in 1988. First black woman from Kansas to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in June 1996.
Honors: Recipient of various awards and recognition for work in education and community service; presentations at numerous conferences and conventions; and for her work with Congress and the National Park Service to preserve sites associated with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1954.
Family: Mother of Chris Henderson, 26; sister to Linda, 61, and Terry, 57; and daughter of Leola Brown Montgomery, all of Topeka
Civic work: Member of a number of professional and civic organizations, board member of Women Work: the National Network for Women's Employment from 1982 to 1993.
Hobbies: Travel, reading
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Henderson started her grade school career in 1955 at Grant Elementary in North Topeka, then the family moved to Springfield, Mo., where her father was reassigned to Benton Avenue AME Church. They had lived in Springfield for two years when Oliver Brown died in June 1961 of a heart attack. Leola Brown then moved back to Topeka to the neighborhood on 1st Street, and Henderson attended sixth grade at Sumner Elementary, once a segregated school for white students.
Henderson went to Roosevelt Junior High School, then Topeka High School for a year, before transferring to Highland Park High School for her junior and senior years.
She was never really aware of the significance of the court decision as she was going through school.
"I think my first knowledge of our family association with Brown was when I was 13 and it was an anniversary, in 1964, and so because of the Civil Rights Act and the country was refocusing on Brown v. Board 10 years later, that was my first awareness that it carried our family name," Henderson related. "I didn't understand the case, but I understood that my last name was attached to this Supreme Court decision. I came home from school, and Charles Kuralt (CBS 'On the Road' reporter) was on the front porch. I didn't know who he was, and he kind of joked with me."
Henderson noted the campaign the NAACP was engaged in and the equity and equality that blacks were trying to achieve took more than a century.
"To understand something like that you really have to take the time to do the research, do the reading and talk to people who were involved. And at 13 years old, I wasn't engaged in any of those pursuits," she said. "It was just one of those days. (Kuralt) visited with my family, and he left and things went back to the way they were, going to games, pep club, school functions and church, and I didn't think anymore about it."
Becoming a teacher
Henderson's next "dawning" that the court case was something special came her first year of college at Baker University. A professor asked if he could announce to the student body during a Monday convocation that she was attending the school.
"I didn't think about it being anything unique and said all right. I had some sense that there must be something of interest (about the Brown case), or that he thought it would be of interest," she said, but she still didn't understand the significance.
She also was asked by her educational history teacher to talk about the case. She agreed, but her talk was short. She said it was her father in the case, that she was from Topeka and the case was about integrating schools. Then it was over.
Henderson was more concerned about getting her college degree because she knew it would be beneficial for whatever career she decided to pursue. She said she was encouraged to go to college because she felt a sense of "collective responsibility to the African-American community" to pursue an education.
"College was the crucible of a lot of the activism and my motivation was not necessarily family. It was what was going on in the country," she said. Black college students, even on campuses the size of Baker, were participating in marches of solidarity, having food drives, having black history month programs and making sure student governments were integrated.
"I was a cheerleader at Baker, of all things, because we needed to integrate the cheerleading squad," she said. "That felt good and that's really why a lot of us were on campus to get an education, so when we got out we could extend the activism within whatever career setting we found ourselves in."
She never went to college intending to become a teacher. However, her adviser told her the classes she had taken lended themselves to pursuing a degree in elementary education.
"I said fine, and it wasn't something I was necessarily passionate about, but it was a matter of course," she said. "It was pragmatic."
Professional life
Henderson's first teaching job ironically sent her through the front doors of Monroe School. She taught sixth grade at the school from 1972 to 1974. She was there when the 20th anniversary of Brown v. Board was commemorated.
"Teaching here enabled some of the conversation that went on with the media about what was different," she said. "In 1974, Monroe was still largely African-American, and that wasn't a bad thing. This time, it was a neighborhood school."
The school was closed in 1975 because of declining enrollment, and Henderson moved to the sixth-grade classroom at Avondale East Elementary and began working on her master's degree in guidance and counseling from Emporia State University. She became a counselor at Lafayette and Quinton Heights elementary schools for several years, then went to work for the Kansas Board of Education. It was there that Henderson began to acquire new skills.
Henderson first was an educational consultant for vocational guidance and counseling, then helped manage federal funds earmarked for women to get nontraditional training and receive support like child care and transportation. She also got involved in a national women's organization, at the time called the National Displaced Homemakers Network, and now Women Work: the National Network of Women's Employment, based in Washington, D.C. She was on the board for 11 years and in a leadership role for four years. The organization represented nearly 15 million women who were either widowed, divorced, separated or had a disabled spouse who needed training, employment and possibly child care.
"We developed legislation and we lobbied and we educated women across the country about their rights and about how to access federal resources," Henderson said. Her term expired in 1993, but the skills she developed helped her establish the Brown Foundation and learn how the political process works.
"It demystified the process of working with the U.S. Congress," she said. She has testified before the U.S. House and Senate on women's issues and Brown v. Board of Education.
A pivotal turn
For Henderson, there was a long stretch between her awareness at Baker that the Brown case was of interest to people, and 1984 -- the 30th anniversary of the case -- when her next turning point came.
"That was when I made a conscious decision to start learning more, not only that, but I made a conscious decision to start sitting my family down, my mother and sisters, and talking to them about Brown," she said. "As I educated myself, I could pass that information on to the rest of the family."
Henderson became friends at work with a black man who was in the Equal Educational Opportunity area within the state Board of Education. One day at lunch, she was talking to the man, Jerry Jones, about how people in Topeka didn't recognize the significance of the Brown case.
"That was the most significant milestone, turning point, whatever phrase you want to use, to talk about things that are life changing," Henderson said. "That one conversation is why I'm sitting here today. It was a challenge, although gently put and well intended, if people aren't commemorating this decision in Topeka and kids aren't learning about this decision in Topeka, then you have a responsibility to change that. So I said, 'What should I do?' "
Jones and Henderson started meeting two or three times a week and brainstorming about what could be done. They came up with the idea of starting an organization to give scholarships to students, and they'd make it a foundation. The seed of the idea grew from there.
Making a foundation
Henderson researched how to form a foundation, completing the paperwork to start a nonprofit organization in 1988. She also developed a board of directors.
"We had an incredible first board," she said. "We wanted people that were recognizable names in the Topeka community, so we would have credibility as a new organization. We would need that for people to take us seriously."
The board had doctors, business executives, academics and community leaders. All were volunteers.
Bob Dunwell, who retired as the chairman of the education department at Washburn University two years ago, remembers Henderson was referred to Dunwell to see if he was interested in helping the foundation.
"Cheryl came over to me and gives me her spiel and I say, 'Why not?' " Dunwell said. "I'm still on the board, one of the dinosaurs, and I'm still extremely enthusiastic about the Brown Foundation and the things it is doing. It is still essential."
Dunwell credits Henderson and her determination for where Monroe School is today and what it stands for.
"She is exceptionally bright, she is exceptionally sensitive, she is exceptionally determined and few people recognize the contribution that Cheryl Brown Henderson has made not only to the black people of Topeka, but the people of Topeka, the total citizenry of Topeka," he said. "It is primarily through her efforts that we have a Brown v. Board National Historic Site."
The Brown Foundation initially was housed at Washburn Law School, then relocated to a downtown Topeka office building before moving this spring to the national historic site.
The foundation created lecture series, scholarships, educational materials, programs and more to promote equity, diversity and information about the Brown case. In 1990, under Henderson's leadership, the Foundation successfully worked with U.S. Congress to establish the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. Then in 2001, again with her efforts, Congress established the Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Presidential Commission, created to provide a federal presence for the 2004 anniversary.
After Henderson took a leave of absence from her state job in 1993 to work on Brown Foundation matters, the organization received funding through a partnership with the Department of Interior and National Park Service, so she became a paid staff member, along with her sister Linda and a part-time bookkeeper. They now provide the park with additional support, whether it's orienting new staff to the history that the park interprets, helping to develop curriculum and exhibits or assisting with off-site programs.
The foundation also can raise money like other nonprofit corporations with membership fees and general giving, and "can converse" with Congress when the park has fiscal needs, Henderson said. Henderson said the Kansas Congressional delegation -- from Bob Dole, Nancy Kassebaum, Dan Glickman and Jim Slattery days to the current delegation -- always has been supportive.
Living the legacy
Real work on Monroe School to turn it into the Brown v. Board of Topeka National Historic Site -- which represented a physical place to educate people about the case -- began in the late 1990s.
"I admit there have been some crying times, but the other 90 percent of times, the work has been enjoyable because of the cooperation and understanding," Henderson said. "Even though Brown v. Board is said to be one of the most significant judicial opinions in this country's history, the majority of the people don't begin to know what happened.
"What's made this all enjoyable has been our ability to educate. That's been terrific."
Henderson educates by traveling around the country, appearing on college campuses and speaking to employee groups and others. Most often she gets positive feedback, and people say they hadn't really understood the case.
"Anytime you hear those kind of comments you know you are doing the right thing and it feels really good," she said.
Henderson has found herself at events in the White House, at events with notables and esteemed academicians and in interviews with C-SPAN, the networks and major newspapers. She was touched at an event in Washington kicking off the 50th anniversary celebration where plaintiffs from all five cases consolidated under the Brown heading were represented. She remembers when two plaintiffs from the Virginia case turned to first lady Laura Bush and told her they had waited nearly 50 years for the recognition.
"Meaning, they had waited nearly 50 years to have someone ask them to tell their story. And they'd waited nearly 50 years to be recognized for the sacrifice they made. Because everyone focuses on Topeka and, quite frankly, Topeka is the least part of the story," Henderson said. Four other lawsuits from South Carolina, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Virginia were combined with Brown.
Henderson amazes her son Chris who says it is "absolutely staggering" to him to look at the kinds of circles his mother moves in.
"It's been amazing to me how much people respect her and what she's done. To me, it is amazing that people all over respect the case and all the things she's done to further it and keep it fresh," he said.
Chris Henderson, now 26, said he was young when his mother started the Brown Foundation.
"I couldn't put into perspective what she was doing, just that it was something a little different," he said. "Being older now and looking back, it was a wonderful thing to preserve the legacy of the family and keeping the case alive and going forward with it."
Cheryl Brown Henderson quotes Jack Greenberg, historic civil rights attorney of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. In his book "Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution," Greenberg said that because of the Supreme Court's peculiar way of naming court decisions, Brown v. Board of Education "has given immortality to a family that had little to do with this struggle."
"And that's right. The one thing I try to tell people is that Brown is simply named for dad. That's it," Henderson said. "And then you have to go on to explain to them what you mean by that. Because people mistakenly think that it was something that Oliver Brown did on his own, and they think it was something he did on behalf of his eldest daughter, when the truth of the matter is it wasn't something dad did on his own, and it wasn't something he did single-handedly on my sister's behalf.
"That's why all this educating has had to happen, and that's why this national park is so significant and important in the history of this country. Because finally, this is a place that will tell the comprehensive story of Brown v. Board in the context of the African-American experience in United States history."
Henderson said her job should get easier because the historic site and its Web site will help get the information out about Brown.
Private life
While Henderson's family of origin had public exposure because of a lawsuit, she is extremely private about her family life. She gives few and short details about her sisters and mother, who all still live in Topeka. They help her with Brown Foundation business and go on some speaking engagements with her.
She was married for 30 years but "now finds herself single" and remains good friends with her former husband. Her son Chris who lives and works in Emporia, has been a student at Emporia State University and wants to go to Spain. "Then he will get on with the rest of his life," Henderson says in a motherly tone.
Henderson sees a definite line between work and home, and always has.
"Almost 99 percent of the time, I have not taken work home in terms of talking about things that are going on at work, or bringing work home unless it's absolutely a necessity," she said. "I think maybe that was a pattern developed from my childhood because we didn't spend a lot of time at home talking about issues that were not related to things we were doing in our home. You know basic living -- like restrictions on television watching or getting ready to go to church were discussed.
"What my father did for a living and, of course, my mother was a homemaker, those were not things we talked about. I had not seen or grown up with a model that had people coming home and discussing and bringing their work with them. When I was at home, I was at home. When I was with my family, when my son was growing up, that was what I did in the evening. I took care of his homework needs, and how much television watching he did, and went to school programs."
Henderson was an active mother. She supported Chris in Boy Scouts and school and sports ventures. Friend Carol Vogel said she and Henderson became friends when their sons became friends on the playground, then continued as friends through school and sports. She said Henderson was always involved with Chris' activities.
"She was a hands-on kind of mom," Vogel said. The two remain friends today.
"She is an outstanding person. I don't see how she gets all the things done that she does in 24 hours. She can pile a lot in," Vogel said.
Shawnee County District Court Judge Eric Rosen, who is on the Brown v. Board of Education national commission to observe the 50th anniversary, says: "From the moment of her birth, Cheryl was wrapped in an identity of purpose and of vision. She has handled that responsibility with grace, dignity and great effectiveness."
Rosen and Henderson were colleagues in Topeka Unified School District 501 in the 1970s and neighbors for 15 years.
"As a school counselor, everyone recognized and respected Cheryl's unique ability to respond to the needs of all children," he said. "As a parent, she is a loving and caring mother with high hopes and expectations for her son Chris, whom was a close friend of my son. Like most neighborhood kids, Chris became a part of the extended family, and as the boys grew, Chris' father, Larry, and I coached them on numerous basketball and baseball teams."
Chris Henderson describes his mother as "a little bundle of energy. I've never met someone who has that much energy, period. She always seems to get up to do anything. She's always been that way. She's got an endless battery."
Vogel says Cheryl Henderson is a committed person, has a sense of humor and likes to have fun. She describes Henderson as very intelligent.
"When you're discussing things, she comes up with a perspective you haven't thought of before. She sees ramifications of things and that's helped her in the kind of work to get things done," Vogel said.
Vogel says, on top of that, Henderson is courageous.
"She doesn't let the fact that you have to go talk to congressmen or people who are figures of authority intimidate her in the least. She's the same person she is with them as she is with everyone else. She's a genuine person," Vogel said.
Rosen says Henderson doesn't shy from a challenge and was instrumental in getting the legislation to establish and get funding for Monroe School as a national historic site and to create the "national commission to observe the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legally ended American apartheid."
"She is simply one of those rare individuals whom by circumstance inherited a legacy and through her life has carried the torch and kept it burning, shining the light as bright as her forebearers 50 years ago," Rosen said.
The real Cheryl
Even though she deals with the national media, Brown scholars and others, Henderson doesn't gloat.
"I always tell people you don't want to appear to be hungry for attention," she said. "I seldom talk about this with anybody. It's what you do. I don't talk about these things. I don't want to be boastful."
When she's in social settings and people ask what she does, she tells them she runs an educational nonprofit. If they question more, she'll tell them it provides scholarships and curriculum. Occasionally, another person will intervene and identify Henderson and who her family really is.
"If you honestly tell somebody I run the Brown Foundation and then tell them what it does, then they get into a really big dialogue about race," she said. "If I'm in a social setting, that's not the conversation I want to have, I have to admit. So sometimes, I don't tell people. I don't want to be Oliver Brown's daughter today. Let's just have this party. Invariably it will happen. You do that all day."
But Henderson really can't get away from it. She doesn't know what it feels like to be anyone other than Oliver Brown's daughter, because he had agreed to be part of the NAACP campaign months before she was even born.
"I absolutely know no other life," she said. "I don't have a comparative experience. I can't tell you. I don't know what it would have been like before because there has never been a before."
Henderson said she is living in the positive shadow of Brown.
"It's been my entire life journey," she said.
Henderson said she has encouraged others, particularly black youths, to write because most of the writing about the black experience has been done by people who didn't experience it.
"I'm making a conscious decision to maintain the legacy, write about the legacy, talk about the legacy, educate about the legacy, that's where I find myself now. That was a conscious decision," she said. "I think I made the decision because I really didn't like how people on the outside looking in were interpreting Brown v. Board. They were leaving out 98 percent of the story. And the 2 percent they were giving was not even accurate. It was really time to do something about that."
Life today
Much of Henderson's time is spent traveling, giving lectures, talking to people. She's on several state and national boards, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
She reads a lot, mostly autobiographies and biographies. She also likes to read about people who succeeded against the odds. There are also self-help books in the stack.
"I will admit that. I actually love to read those books," she said, rattling off Dr. Phil and Deepak Chopra. "They're very inspiring."
She goes to movies with friends and out to dinner. Then there's going to museums.
There's "a visceral experience, something very moving about reading about the past, seeing artifacts, and seeing photos of people you've only heard about," she said.
That gets back to her love of travel.
"I may as well (love it) because at least three weeks out of every month I'm on the road some place," she said.
Traveling, she says, is a broadening experience.
"Our country is so diverse in both its terrain and topography, but its communal structures are so diverse," she said. "Every community has its own uniqueness, whether it's food, or whether it's something they all do, like a cold weather state likes hockey. It's amazing. You can travel coast to coast and it's almost like you've been around the world, right here in this country."
Henderson said that in the United States, a person can "run into people from every place in the world, food from every place in the world, cultures from every place in the world, and that's why I like traveling because of those experiences. It expands your view of the world and makes you more open-minded. And it also makes you more willing to take risks."
Henderson said starting the Brown Foundation and working on the Monroe School project have been risks.
"The willingness to take the risks comes from having traveled and having interacted with people," she said. "It's demystifying people, demystifying the idea of race and ethnicity, and going past someone's exterior, only to discover that you have absolutely everything in common.
"I think that's why people who take risks are willing to take the risk. There's no mystique here. You either do it or you don't." hk
Anita Miller is the managing editor/special projects at The Capital-Journal. She can be reached at anita.miller@cjonline.com.
