Page 11 - Ambassdor Delano Lewis Sample

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GROWING UP IN KANSAS

You’ve had an amazing life. Please talk about growing up in
Kansas, your heroes: who are the people you admired and

guided you to help become the person you are today?

I was born in 1938 in southern Kansas but moved to Kansas
when I was about two. I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, which is
across the river from Kansas City, Missouri. It was a segregated

time. I spent my formative years in Kansas City, and I can just
thank my heroes. Certainly, my schoolteachers and my high
school principal will probably stand out the most. His name was

Solomon Thompson, Sol Thompson. He was the principal of
Sumner High School: the only Black high school in the state of
Kansas.
The elementary schools were segregated. As you know, the

Brown vs. Board of Education 1954 decision desegregated
schools. One of those cases was the Topeka, Kansas case.

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