Kenneth McFarland

In 1942, following conferral of his doctorate, he was appointed superintendent of schools in Topeka, the state capital. He was soon able to concentrate all authority over the school system, previously scattered among the school board's disparate committees, in himself. Once he had done so, he focused on two policy goals: reorienting the high school curriculum toward vocational education from a more college-preparatory approach, and keeping expenses down as much as possible. Many of the teachers he promoted to principal and assistant administrator positions were former coaches, who tended to have similar views of the role of education in local life as he did.[5]^:381

McFarland also gained the favor of Topeka's civic and community leaders through his devotion to another aspect of the status quo: maintaining what racial segregation existed in the city's schools. Kansas permitted, but did not require, cities above a certain size to establish separate schools for Black and White students. Topeka had separate elementary schools; the year before McFarland was appointed superintendent the district had integrated its junior high school.[5]^:382–3

Students of both races attended Topeka High School but were segregated within it, with Black students in their own classes taught by Black teachers, playing on separate athletic teams and having a separate student council. Both Black students and their teachers were under the supervision of Harrison Caldwell, a Black colleague of McFarland's from Pittsburg who had worked with him in Coffeyville as well. Caldwell enforced segregation strictly, regularly patrolling the school cafeteria at lunchtime to make sure Black students did not sit with their White classmates; he also implicitly threatened the Black teachers with dismissal (as had happened to the Black teachers at the junior high following its integration) if they advocated for further integration and held regular Black-only assemblies where he lectured the students on what is now called respectability politics.[5]^:382–3

When Black parents and activists pressed for further integration, McFarland said Topeka was not yet ready for it. He never expressed any prejudicial opinion, at least not publicly, but Southeastern Kansas during his childhood there had been known as the part of the state where racism was strongest. Caldwell and other Blacks who believed that their community benefited from Topeka's lighter segregation since the schools there, unlike many in the South, took the judicial "separate but equal" mandate more seriously.[5]^:382–3 In his own later speeches about the subject, McFarland took most of his guidance from Booker T. Washington, arguing that America could only guarantee equal opportunity.[5]^:384

In the late 1940s McFarland began to take more time away from his duties as superintendent to go on nationwide speaking tours, the proceeds from which he used to assemble a large horse farm on the west side of Topeka where he and his wife lived. This increased prominence led to talk that he might run for governor.[5]^:384 But, along with the continuing segregation at the schools and McFarland's authoritarian governance of the district, it also aroused resentment in Topeka. In 1951 his political opponents supported a slate of three candidates for the six-member school board to oppose incumbents who were staunch supporters of the superintendent.[5]^:404–5

McFarland's supporters campaigned vigorously, afraid that another administration might not be as invested in defending segregation in the recently filed Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit as his was. The opponents called for a "full-time superintendent". The month before the election, the Topeka Daily Capital, having fought off an effort in the state legislature to restrict access to the audit financial records of the state's school districts, obtained and published Topeka's.[5]^:404–5

Those records showed that for years, the district had engaged in troublesome financial practices despite the repeated admonitions from the auditors to stop doing so. The allegations centered around $75,000 in student-fee money, held in the central office and spent for a variety of purposes, not always properly accounted for. Some were related-party transactions, such as a $3,000 purchase of furniture from a company owned by McFarland's secretary's husband, an amount well over the $200 threshold state law at the time required be covered by a contract executed by the school board, which had not been made.[5]^:404–5

McFarland's supporters claimed the report was politically timed to embarrass him. Two days after the election, in which all three incumbents lost, McFarland announced his resignation effective in August, at the end of the school year. He would henceforth concentrate his career on his speaking engagements.[5]^:404–5