Naomi Brooks v. School Board of Moberly, MO

When Moberly, Missouri desegregated their schools in 1955, the Board of Education closed the Black school and laid off its eleven teachers. As the Moberly-Monitor Index reported: “The board began to study integration problems following the decision of the United States Supreme Court [in Brown v. Board of Education]. After several months of study, the integration committee appointed by the board reported its findings and recommended closing of Lincoln School.” None of those eleven Black teachers were hired back into open positions. As a matter of fact, all those open positions went to newly hired white faculty.

In November 1955, several of the Black teachers who’d been terminated sued the Moberly school board—arguing that they had been let go because they were Black. The case—Naomi Brooks v. School Board of Moberly, MO—was the first court challenge of Black teacher displacement post-Brown. Brooks et. al eventually lost at the United States Eight District Court of Appeals in St. Louis. In his ruling against the plaintiffs, Judge Martin D. Van Oosterhout acknowledged that the firing of all the Black teachers and the re-hiring of only white teachers as the district integrated was “unusual and somewhat startling.” Even so, the court determined no racial discrimination had taken place.

Naomi Brooks v. School Board of Moberly, MO had profound consequences for how school districts handled their Black teacher workforces through the mid-1960s. The case, ultimately, gave local boards of education a legal mechanism to discriminate against Black teachers as they worked to consolidate their dual school systems into single, unified ones..

I’m at the beginning stages of this project.

Presentations

• Nichols, Joseph R. “Naomi Brooks v. Moberly, MO and the Black Teacher Workforce Post-Brown, 1955-1970.” Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 3-7, 2024. (presentation) (forthcoming)