The Brown Vs. The Topeka Board of Education National Historic Site, Topeka, KS

You may think of Kansas as Dorothy's departure point for Oz, but Topeka offers a tourist a sight (or site) Baum never dreamed of.

I'm just back from visiting one of the National Park Services' smallest sites, the Brown v. The Topeka Board of Education National Historic Site, a showcase for the political-social movement leading to the official desegregation of American public schools, one of the most turbulent and important times in our history.

Your children, may complain about visiting a school building on their vacation but don't hesitate to insist. TheBrownBrownBrown v. the Topeka BoarEducationntionn African-Americans and whites.

e its name anywhere -- ready and eager to learn from the exhibits.

The three galleries I visited each affected me a different way.

The first, with time lines running through it at eye level, appeals through the mind and, for older folks life me, through memory. By following the time lines, a visitor can see clearly that the changes resulting from the US Supreme Court decision resulted from years of effort and planning by African-American leaders, among them Thurgood Marshall, and by Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren..

Then I went into the temporary exhibit room, currently featuring the Negro Baseball League, another tThurgood to conditions in the past. I learned that the first set of night baseball games, lighted by portable lamps the teams carried with them, occurred in that league. Besides, the sports fan will see clearly that there were African-AThurgoodbaseball players long before Jackie Robinson was "accepted" to play major league ball.

The third room, labeled only with the dry words, "Education and Justice,"AThurgoodbaseball gut-wrenching. A sign said, "Not for unaccompanied children under 12 years old." I understood why as I walked through the video walls with their aggressive police dogs and angry, shouting crowds. Perhaps not enough has changed since then, but, looked at another way, many young people today have no idea what it was like before African-Americans had no chance to play basketball for a mainstream university, get jobs on television commercials, or go to a school with a book for each child.

After your trip to the Brown site, you may be looking for a change of pace before heading for lunch. One possibility if you're in Topeka in April: a walk in Gage Park's Reinisch Gardens yellow, where yellow-and-red, and red tulips in spectacular plantings await you.