Hard truths delivered by a bold voice: Wichita’s Mrs. Jo stood strong against discrimination

Josephine Vonceal Pace “Jo” Brown was the first Black woman to chair Wichita School Board. She died Dec. 31. (Photo by Mark McCormick)

Josephine Vonceal Pace “Jo” Brown visited my high school back in the 1980s. The administration at good ol’ North High invited her to speak about her historic career as the first Black woman to chair Wichita School Board. 

We learned that day that the Mrs. Jo spoke hard, even painful truths wrapped in her unique brand of sophistication. No one had the status nor the courage to censor her. Her voice carried. 

She told the auditorium about the Wichita she’d lived through, including a practice of allowing Black students to swim only late on Fridays, after white students. Staff then drained and refilled the pool, to save white students from swimming in the same water. 

That story landed hard. We were the last generation of youth whose parents were shaped in a pre-civil rights America. We understood this historically, but Mrs. Jo made us feel it. 

That will moor much of her legacy: standing 10-toes or high-heels down on truth and giving people the kind of cultural equilibrium to speak loud and true about what hurts.

She died New Year’s Eve at 96, unwilling to let the year end before having her final say. 

Years later, as a columnist, my reference to that pool story in a column ignited a reader firestorm. White, Jim Crow-era graduates claimed that the pools weren’t segregated.  

Letters begat calls for a retraction and for me to be fired. I dug in as the newspaper brass pressed me to relent. 

Enter Mrs. Jo. 

“They’re after you, aren’t they baby?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

She said, “Humph,” with a resolve in her voice. The cavalry had arrived. 

“Here’s what you do,” she said. “You go down to the Central Branch Library. Go into the Special Collections desk and ask for a book written by Sandra Van Meter.”

Mrs. Jo explained that as board chair, she’d commissioned a book documenting the district’s history and that in one of the chapters, we’d all learn the truth, and it proved worse than anything I’d shared. 

The district literally had convened discussions about building a separate school to keep Black students and white students out of the same water. The district never built that separate building but maintained the strange water-purity practice. 

Similar stories existed from Wichita to Salina to progressive Lawrence and into the South. Heather McGhee, in her 2021 book, “The Sum of Us,” shared how Montgomery, Alabama, paved over its municipal pool — that Black taxes help build — rather than integrate it. 

It’s precisely this kind of history many Americans today would banish rather than face. Their revulsion at this black-and-white image of themselves offers a brutal contrast to the lived experience of Black residents only allowed to skate or visit dentists on certain days. 

Mrs. Jo fought against such practices, and she’s partly the reason I prioritize telling various historic and social truths regardless of the often-frightening backlash. 

The point was not for her to forever stand behind me but to show me how to stand on my own. Much of the courage I stood on, whether calling out a school bus company or a police website humiliating women, came from her. 

Imagine what she lived through, not just as an educator following the Brown decision, but in a district that considered foregoing federal funds rather than integrating. Letters from white parents who didn’t want “n-words” teaching their children. 

Despite that, she offered a warm smile and regal kindness. She never seemed bitter, just resolutely unbothered. When I read this stanza in “Still I Rise” — 

 “Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard,
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.” —

 it reminded me of Mrs. Jo. In a society expecting her to dim her light, Mrs. Jo set the night sky ablaze with searchlights. 

 When she confronted the yet lingering vestiges of that era, at a bank or a store, she would correct them as she might one of her tiny students. Firmly but gracefully. 

 “You don’t pay and beg, baby,” she told me once. 

She could be blunt, but not cruel. Her advice pinched your heart but fixed your vision. She often attributed her ability to speak so boldly to her husband, the late Dr. Val J. Brown Sr., whose medical practice sheltered her from reprisals. 

That voice. It bridged eras and will outlast us all. She used that voice to help so many people and guided still more toward finding their own.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.