Perhaps one of the youngest legends of the civil rights movement, Katherine Louise Carper was a 10-year-old girl who lived with her mother Lena Carper in Topeka, Kansas. Though she lived in a neighborhood with white children and played with them outside of school every day, segregation was the law of the land and forced Katherine to make a harrowing trek to and from school each day totaling over eight hours.
Braving everything from rain to snow and temperatures ranging from frigid in the winter to sweltering in the summer, Katherine had to walk through the fields and down unpaved roads just to get to a main street where she would wait for the bus. With nowhere to sit and no shelter from severe weather conditions, Katherine was one of the first children to be picked up each day, but by the time the bus arrived at the school, children were standing in the aisle and sitting on each other’s laps due to overcrowding.1