Mary White

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From Kansapedia, Kansas Historical Society: In 1921 there was a tragic event on a Tuesday evening in May, a horseback riding accident. She was taken home and city officials stopped all traffic in the White neighborhood and a telephone official cut all calls to their home. Mary died of a cerebral hemorrhage early Friday morning, May 13, 1921. One of her parents' most cherished memories was the group of African American children who assembled on their lawn and mourned Mary's death as they turned toward the window in Mary's room.

The day after her funeral, her mother and father wrote her obituary. The Emporia Gazette ran it May 17, the Kansas City Star picked it up. Franklin P. Adams reprinted it in his Conning Tower column in the New York Tribune, May 24, 1921. From there it was picked up in the daily press across the nation. A woman's magazine ran it then another and another. Christopher Morley was making an anthology and asked to include it. Alexander Woollcott put it into the first Reader and read it over the radio. Other radio entertainers used it and within a year it appeared in four books of reading for high schools and colleges. Mary's parents kept tally for 20 years, it was reprinted in more than 40 school readers or anthologies of Americana. Mary White survived in the hearts of high school and college students. In the greatest emotional crisis of their lives, William Allen White and Sallie White wrote a piece that lived and was treasured by scores of people. In a column-long editorial, they wrote the story of Mary's life. The spirit of the piece appealed to those who read it. The work has been published in more than 25 different books designed for high school and college reading. The editorial has been reprinted more than any other work by William Allen White. So the story of Mary White survived.

Many memorials were established in Mary's honor. Within a month of her death, Emporia High School established a rest room for African American girls in memory of Mary's struggles for their accommodations. Her mother furnished the room, redecorating on a regular basis, and keeping Mary's effects until her own death in 1950. Over the years her parents bought 50 acres for a park that was named Peter Pan Park. In 1926 they donated it to the city of Emporia in Mary's honor.

Mary's death came more than a year before she finished high school and would have entered Wellesley. The university continued to carry on her on the rolls of the Wellesley class of 1926. Five years after her death, the Wellesley class that she would have graduated with dedicated their class annual and graduation exercises in her memory.