Sumner Elementary School, at 330 SW Western, is the counterpart to the Monroe Elementary School (now the Brown v. Board National Historic Site) in the story of the Topeka desegregation case. While Monroe was the Black school that Linda Brown attended, Sumner was the white school five blocks from her home that she was prevented from attending. Oliver Brown, her father, attempted to enrol Linda at Sumner and was turned away — an act that he and the NAACP used as the basis for the lawsuit.
The school continues to operate as a public elementary school and is not open for general public touring. The exterior and the surrounding neighbourhood give a sense of the geography of Topeka's 1950s school segregation — Monroe and Sumner are close enough to walk between, making the absurdity of Linda Brown's daily commute to the distant Black school viscerally apparent. A historical marker explains the site's significance.