Bernice Hutcherson - 2007 Legacy Award Winner

Committed social worker and educator, Bernice Hutcherson is a cornerstone of the Wichita community. Born on April 4, 1925, to Henrietta and Albert Ray, Sr., Hutcherson has solidified her commitment to education and social service. Born in Newton, Kansas, and educated in public schools, Hutcherson received her B.A. from Langston University in 1950. She was further trained at the Chicago Teacher's College and received an M.S.W. from the University of Kansas in 1969.

In a nearly five-decade career, Hutcherson worked as an educator, beginning her career as a remedial reading teacher in the Chicago Public Schools and as a social worker in her native Kansas. She spent nearly twenty years with Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Services in various supervisory and training positions before beginning as a professor of Social Work at Wichita State University in 1970. She served on numerous university committees and served a three-year term as gerontology faculty chair before finally retiring in 1996.

Hutcherson continues her involvement in the discipline of social work by volunteering through committee and board structures dedicated to substance abuse research and program development. Hutcherson is the recipient of numerous community, professional, and academic accolades and the Wichita City Council named a senior citizens housing facility in her honor in 1980. She sustains active membership in local and national civic and cultural organizations. Hutcherson was married to Hubert Hutcherson for forty years. She has two daughters and four grandchildren.

 

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George T. Johnson - 2007 Legacy Award Winner                                         

George Johnson returned to Wichita, Kansas when he was six months old. He was the only child of George Dewey and Geneva Van Leu Johnson and he continues the legacy of John Henry Van Leu who was the largest African American landowner in early Wichita's history.  He attended the segregated Wichita Public Schools. He later received a B.A. degree from Columbia College in Columbia Missouri. In 1947, at the age of 17, he joined the U.S. Army. Initially, he expected to serve only three years and be discharged. However, because of the Korean War in 1950, his enlistment was involuntarily extended. By the end of the War, Mr. Johnson had achieved the rank of Sergeant First Class and decided to make the Army a career as a public relations specialist.

As a dedicated soldier in the Vietnam War, George Johnson used courage in the midst of adversity to save the lives of his comrades. Shortly after arriving in the country, a helicopter crew from his unit was shot down in the enemy area of the Viet Congo, Johnson volunteered to fly into this hostile area and rescue the crew. For this act of heroism, he was awarded The Distinguished Flying Cross. He was one of the first individuals to receive a high decoration in the War. In a 1965 special report about the Vietnam War, Jet Magazine cited Johnson for his heroism.

He flew for President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the ill-fated Summit Conference in 1960. After retiring from the Army in 1967, Johnson returned to Wichita and was employed at Beech Aircraft as Supervisor of Aerospace Logistics Programs/Engineering. Along with U. L. "Rip" Gooch he founded the Jayhawk Chapter of Negro Airmen International, Inc. After his second retirement he was approached by business leaders for the 21st Street Development and founded the Diversified Educational Training & Manufacturing Company, Inc. (DETAMC).  George is now retired and he & his wife Pamela and have five children.

 

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Dr. Val Brown, Sr. - 2007 Legacy Award Winner                                      

For 47 years, Dr. Val Brown, Sr. practiced medicine at 17th Street and Hydraulic, amassing more than 8,000 patients until his retirement in January 1995. He never turned away patients without insurance or payment. He made house calls, and he personally returned telephone calls. The son of the second African American physician in Wichita, he was referred to as "little Dr. Brown."

Born on February 14, 1924, his father died when he was one year old. His mother referred to his father frequently. Although he often heard the name "lil' Dr. Brown" he says, “I did not know what a doctor was..." until he was older and met the four practicing African American doctors in Wichita. As far as college was concerned, his mother told him that ''he was going to Howard University." He was pleased. When he set off for medical school he had no tuition and only $18.00 in his pocket. Howard University had a reputation for producing some of the best and brightest African Americans including the Dr. Charles Drew who is credited with discovering blood plasma. Dr. Drew was one of the professors in surgery ending his tenure at Howard University while Brown was attending.

The Army's specialized training program financed Brown's medical education. After completing medical school and serving two years in the service, he returned to Wichita to open his medical practice. An African American doctor, Dr. J.E. Farmer had told him that an office is ''waiting here for you for $15.00 a month office space rental.

Brown began practicing in December of 1948. The hospitals in Wichita were severely segregated. Many patients did not receive the respect from the hospital staff. There were no African American surgeons and African Americans’ were relegated to only outpatient services. Initially his office calls were $5.00 that was gradually raised to $10-15. Medicaid was not in effect, so payments were "haphazard." Significant medical coverage through insurance during this time was according to Brown "out of the question." At the height of his practice, Brown had 25-30 patients per day. Dr. Brown is married to Josephine Brown. They have four children.

 

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In Memory of Oretha Ann Faust - 2007 Legacy Award Winner

Oretha Ann Thomas House Faust was born October 20, 1929 in Dover, Oklahoma. She was the second born of a set of twins to her parents, Robert Theodore House and Mary Amy Phillips House, and the fourth born to her parents in a sibling group of 11 girls.  In 1947 the family moved to the "bright lights" of Wichita, Kansas. Mrs. Faust's work outside the home and community activism often times came at the sacrifice of time spent with her own children. But she was very dedicated to her children and family and encouraged all family members to know their heritage, because "the more a person knows about where he/she comes from, the better that person can determine where he/she is going."

Mrs. Faust's life-time accomplishments included being the recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. award (1989) for her community activism in Wichita. She was the founder of Mother's Organized Movement (MOMS) and the chair and founder of Wichita (welfare) Clients Council (1983) a grassroots group of low income people who got together to advise the Legal Aid Society of Wichita on legal concerns of the poor and as a way to help defuse the anger and helplessness of the poor.  Mrs. Faust was a member of the National Welfare Rights Organization, City of Wichita-Human Resources Board, NAACP, Urban League, Black Arts Festival Committee, Legal Services of Wichita Board, Appointed to the Advisory Board-City Commissioners, and the Citizens Participation Board. Mrs. Faust was a participant in the Poor People March (Washington, D.C.), and worked with a variety of Democratic Party groups, and senior citizen organizations. Mrs. Faust was considered a self-appointed ruckus raiser among social service bureaucrats and many social workers would hate to see her coming. Mrs. Faust once stated, “Her proudest accomplishments had been her children, who plan to continue the family tradition of political activism.”

Mrs. Faust was the mother of 5 children, 13 Grandchildren; three Great-Grandchildren; and a host of other relatives and friends.  Mrs. Faust died September 28, 2001.

 

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Horace G. Elliott - 2007 Legacy Award Winner

Horace Elliott was born on a small farm in Okmulgee County Oklahoma.  He served in World War II as a Navy Seabee.  His unit loaded materials from ships for the US Marines in the South Pacific.  Mr. Elliott began attending NAACP meetings in the 1960’s when Chester I. Lewis was president of the Wichita Branch.  He has served as a board member, the Chairman of the life membership committee and has continued to serve as the branch historian.  Mr. Elliott became involved in the Wichita NAACP so that he could make a difference on such issues as fair housing, voting rights, civil rights, public accommodations, the right to jury duty, women’s rights, Brown vs. Topeka BOE and desegregation in the armed forces. He keeps active in mind and body by participating in a number of community organizations; The Kansas African American Museum, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Northeast Senior Center and the Langston University Alumni Association.  Mr. Elliot is a Langston University Class of 1950 graduate and was recently inducted into the Langston University Alumni Association 2005 Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame. 

 

 

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The 1958 Wichita Branch NAACP Youth Council - 2006 Legacy Award Winners

THE JULY HEAT moved upward from the sidewalk in waves, and  the humidity kept most people inside shade-drawn rooms, somnolent and miserable despite the futile droning of fans. A dozen black teenagers dressed in church clothes entered the Dockum Drug Store on the corner of Broadway and Douglas late Thursday afternoon, quietly made their way to the lunch counter, and sat on the stools, waiting, silent, hearts pounding, courage marshaled. They had practiced for this moment. Some of their parents were standing across the street, anxiously awaiting the response of the staff and management to these teens' request for service. They were not in Greensboro, North Carolina, and it was not 1960. They were in the middle of the continental United States, in Wichita, Kansas, and it was the summer of 1958.

 The NAACP group sat quietly from before lunch through the dinner hour, two days a week—Thursdays, when downtown stores stayed open, and Saturdays—for more than three weeks. Their practice sessions trained them to sit facing forward as though expecting to be served. There was to be no reading or turning on the stools. The police arrived twice, on Thursday evenings. Forty years later Carol Parks Hahn remembered feeling their presence and glancing behind her to see three officers armed with billy clubs, standing as though they knew that she was in charge of reporting what transpired to her mother and Chester Lewis. One officer hit a billy club repeatedly against the palm of his hand, glowering and telling the youths to move off the stools. They shifted to the floor. The first time that happened Carol Parks telephoned Chester Lewis, who advised them to leave quietly, which they did.

The following day, Monday, Carol Parks took her seat at the lunch counter along with a few other early arrivals. Ron was out of town for Army Reserve training, and Lequeatta was working as a lifeguard, not assigned to sit in until the afternoon shift. Carol saw a white man in his thirties or forties enter the store, glance to the back of the store where Wayne Williams stood, and say to him, "Serve them. I'm losing too much money." Stunned and exhausted, she and the other students drank a victory Coke at the lunch counter. Then Carol went home to tell her mother the news. Someone called Lequeatta at the pool, telling her that she need not come to the sit-in. Dockum's owner had changed the policy.

After Williams announced that they were to be served, Chester Lewis confirmed by a telephone call to the vice president of Dockum's "that he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc., to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color." The following day, Lewis wrote to Herb Wright, "On Monday, August 11, 1958, I held a conference with Walter Hieger, the vice president of the Dockum Chain Drug Stores and he agreed to abolish all discriminatory practices as of Monday morning, at 10: 00 a.m. August 11." The youths had won. The largest drugstore chain in Kansas had desegregated not only its Wichita stores but also all Rexall Drug Stores in Kansas.