Mrs. Nelson's Class

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board

of Education of Topeka, Kansas that state-sanctioned segregation of public

schools is unconstitutional.

In September 1954, in an Air Force base school near Salina, Kansas, young

African American teacher Mrs. Johnnie Mitchell Nelson became the teacher of

a second grade class of twenty white children. Mrs. Nelson knew, but did her

pupils understand they were making history together?

Through a class roster of persona poems by poets Doug Anderson, Martha

Collins, Alfred Corn, Annie Finch, Helen Frost, Margaret Gibson, Jeanine

Hathaway, Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman, Peter Johnson, Meg Kearney,

Ron Koertge, David Mason, Leslie Monsour, Dinty W. Moore, Marilyn Nelson,

LeslÉa Newman, Michael Palma, Michael Waters, and Katherine Williams, this

anthology presents Mrs. Nelson and her class, imagining how she and her

students may have experienced their unique situation.