jan 1, 1887 - Melville School (Major Hudson Mexican Annex)

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1887 Melville School (Major Hudson Mexican Annex) constructed: Constructed around 1887 on a rugged hillside north of the City of Rosedale in Rural District 33, the Melville School became the site of a significant controversy over the segregation of Mexican students in Kansas public schools. In the early 1920s, Mexican schoolchildren in Kansas City, Kansas were taught in large classes (up to 80 students) in the basements of existing elementary schools. In September 1924, a near "race riot" erupted when a mob of at least 200 Anglo parents surrounded Major Hudson Elementary School the day after four children were permitted to join regular classes at the newly-built school in Rosedale. Over the course of the next 18 months, at the persistent urging of Mexican diplomats, the U.S. State Department intervened and eventually succeeded in requiring Kansas City, Kansas School District to educate the Mexican students. The Mexican Consul in Kansas City summoned the Mexican Embassy in Washington, which pressed U.S. Secretaries of State Charles Evan Hughes and his successor, Frank Kellogg, to intervene. The State Department in turn asked Kansas Governor Ben S. Paulen to direct the school district to admit the students. Paulen ordered an investigation by State Attorney General C.B. Griffith, who would simultaneously build a national reputation for fighting bigotry when he helped Paulen defeat legislation allowing local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan to operate in Kansas without a state charter. The Mexican Embassy's requests were premised legally on the protection of treaty rights recognizing Mexicans as "friendly" aliens, as well as appeals to ensure that the students were provided equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The "racial problem" was solved later that year, when the KCK School District created a segregated Mexican school in the 1887 Melville School, the wood frame building that Major Hudson replaced. The creation of the Major Hudson "Mexican Annex" in Rosedale and the Clara Barton School in Argentine was consistent with Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that sanctioned "separate but equal" education. Importantly, it would not be until 1954, the same year that the Supreme Court overturned Plessy in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, that the Court would agree in Hernandez v. Texas that minority groups other than African-Americans were entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. According to school district records, the Melville School was "no longer needed" and ceased operations in 1940. (Daniel Serda may have information on the above section). The site has never been formally subdivided, but the school building was sold to Shawnee Boulevard Christian Church in 1941 for use as a Youth Center. The Church resolved to sell the building in 1947, and it was eventually demolished (exact date unknown, but is c1960). The site was partitioned into four residential lots, which are now occupied by private residences. Source: https://khri.kansasgis.org/

Saturnino Alvarado Story here. https://pendergastkc.org/article/biography/saturnino-alvarado

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