24 / 64
drought and dust storms. Historians
refer to this period as the Dust Bowl.
All of the Plains states were affected,
from Texas to the Dakotas. But south-
western Kansas was hit especially
hard. Dust clouds up to two miles high
swept across the Plains. Some topsoil
was blown as far away as New York
City. Many farmers went bankrupt.
In the 1950s, a century after the
“Bleeding Kansas” era, the Jayhawker
State once again became a battle zone
for civil rights. This time, however, the
battle was in the courts. Although
slavery had long been abolished in the
nation, many states still practiced
racial segregation. These states,
including Kansas, maintained a policy
of “separate but equal.” Under this
policy, it was legal to require blacks to
use separate facilities from whites, as
long as these facilities provided the
same services.
Oliver Brown, an African-
American father from Topeka, Kansas,
challenged this policy of racial segre-
gation when he tried to enroll his
daughter in an all-white school. When
she was denied the chance to enroll,
Brown took the case to court.
Ultimately, the landmark case
Brown
v. Board of Education
went to the U.S.
Supreme Court. In 1954, the Court
ruled that the policy of “separate but
equal” was unconstitutional, ending
the practice of school segregation
nationwide.
Government
Kansas has a bicameral, or two-cham-
ber, state legislature consisting of the
Kansas Senate and the State House of
Representatives. Its 40 state senators
are elected to four-year terms and its
125 state representatives serve two-
year terms.
Kansas’s executive branch consists
of six elected officials who each serve
24
Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska
Did You Know?
The nation’s first patented helicopter
was built in 1909 in Goodland,
Kansas. William J. Purvis and Charles
A. Wilson, two railroad mechanics, got
the idea for their design from watch-
ing a child playing with a pinwheel.