Welcome
The Wichita Branch NAACP
was formed in 1919 by founder of the Negro Star, H. T. Sims, who on July 14, 1919 wrote the following letter to the NAACP National Secretary:
The Organization for the Advancement of the Colored People is not here, but we want it and if you will send us the information necessary to perfect the organization, we will start now or as soon as we hear from you.
“I needed not tell you I love my people, you know I could not do so otherwise, and that is my only reason for being up here (Wichita), the white man of the South attempted to stop me from praising my people and I moved. So I stand at your serve to do he best I can. Thanking you for your past efforts to encourage and protect our race.
I am yours,
H. T. Sims
Dr. Grantz Brown followed up with a letter dated March 10, 1920 that the Branch president was the Honorable Judge John Madden (white). Kansas State Governor, Henry Allen received his honorary membership on April 21, 1920 . Allen was Kansas’ 21st governor and served from 1919 to 1923. The Wichita Branch NAACP #4043 received its charter on April 9, 1920.
The Story of Dockum
On July 19, 1958 The Dockum Drug Store sit-in was the first organized lunch counter sit-ins for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments in the United States. The protest took place in downtown Wichita, Kansas, at a Dockum Drug Store (a store in the old Rexall chain), in which protesters would sit at the counter all day until the store closed, ignoring taunts from counter protesters. It is notable for happening before the well known 1960 Greensboro sit-ins.
Under the Branch President, Chester I. Lewis, twenty-year-old Ron Walters, president of the local NAACP Youth Council, organized the Wichita protest together with his cousin Carol Parks-Hahn. Wichita was heavily segregated in the late 1950s, with schools segregated up to high school and blacks excluded from public accommodations., Walters went for lunch to a Woolworth’s store, which would only serve Blacks bagged lunches sold from one end of the lunch counter. Seeking to find a way to protest against the practice, Walters and his cousin Carol Parks-Hahn met with attorney Frank Williams, who described a sit-in by students at a California college who ended segregation at a campus restaurant by occupying it with students reading newspapers all day long. The protest was inspired by the actions of the Little Rock Nine and the earlier Montgomery Bus Boycott. The plan began on July 19, 1958, with ten well-dressed and polite Black students seeking to place orders while sitting at the lunch counter. Parks-Haun ordered a Coca-Cola from a waitress, who served it to her but then pulled it back when she realized that “store policy was not to serve colored people”. Students sat quietly all day at the counters, enduring taunts and threats from white customers. After three weeks, on August 11, the manager came in and said “Serve them — I’m losing too much money”. Ultimately, all of the Dockum locations in Kansas were desegregated. The sit-in was not sanctioned by the National office of the National Association of Colored People. On August 19, 1958, in Oklahoma City a nationally recognized sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter occurred
Notable Branch presidents have included:
A Price Woodard, an attorney and the 1st African American to serve as Mayor of Wichita;
Dunbar Reed, branch executive at the Wichita (Kan.) YMCA. Beginning in 1953, he served on the national staff at two area councils and then became the director of field services for the National Council. At one point, he was the highest-ranking African-American in the United States.
Curtis McClinton, Sr. In 1956, McClinton was elected to Kansas’ House of Representatives. During his first of two terms, McClinton worked to pass a public accommodations law for the state of Kansas to ensure equal treatment for all races in public places, such as restaurants, hotels and other businesses. McClinton also holds the honor of being Kansas’ first African American state senator from 1964-1968.
Chester I Lewis, a Lewis became president of the organization in 1956. As leader of the Wichita NAACP, he volunteered his legal expertise to foster racial integration of the city’s police and fire departments and its public schools. He also lobbied for the passage of the Wichita Fair Housing Ordinance. For more than a decade, Lewis was an active leader of the local, state, and national NAACP. In 1962, he was among the leaders of the “Young Turks,” a national movement within the NAACP that sought to shift the organization’s traditional focus of seeking change through court action and legislation to include strategies of non-violent protest and direct action.
Kevin Myles, currently serves as the Southeast Regional Field Director, providing training, guidance, and assistance to more than 600 active units Kevin has spent his adult life serving the community through volunteer service within the NAACP where he has served as a Branch Youth Advisor, Parliamentarian, Legal Redress Chairman, Branch AND State Political Action Chairman, Branch President (where he received 8 National Thalheimer Awards for programs and publications), and the Kansas State Conference President.
Lavonta Williams was a member of the Wichita City Council in Kansas, representing District 1. She was appointed to serve a partial term on the council in April 2007. Williams won election to a full term in 2009 and served until 2018. She was the 1st African American female elected to serve on the city council and also served as the 1st African American vice Mayor.
The branch continues to carry out the mission of the organization .
