this was don richie who brought his family from franklin indiana, in march of 1855 just three months after the town of topeka was established. he becomes a very active -- an activist in the free state cause. beginning by the fall of 1855, these rival forces are each creating their own towns. to come see is a community established by folks for slavery. it's five miles east of topeka. it was the scene of pro slavery folks. then when holiday and the people that his group found topeka in december of 1854, they come with the notion that they're going to have a free state town. that is just five miles apart. all up and down the kansas river, you have these communities, one is a free state community as opposed to lecompton which is a pro slavery community. and they hope, each one, to run the other one out. one of the things that missouri does, for instance, they bring all sorts of malicious into kansas and identify lawrence as a community that is settled by new england anti-slavery people. so an army literally comes into consistentance from all these militias coming into kansas and identify

. >> senate historian emeritus don richie and former house historian ray smog on the history of the housend senate, its leaders characters and prominent events sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's c&a. >> the c-span city store has been on the road throughout the year. tonight on american history tv, we are featuring historic sites in several cities. this hour topeka kansas, cox communication hosted our recent visit. >> we are standing in the kindergarten room of the monroe elementary school at brown v. board of education national historic site in topeka, kansas. this was one of the four african-american elementary schools that were operating in topeka in 1952 when the brown v. board of education case was filed in district court. the brown v. board of education case is really a small piece of a much larger case that started really, back in the late 1920s and early 1930s. which was part of the national association for the advancement of colored people's -- or the naacp's struggle to overturn segregation in public education. so they were attempting to file cases that would ev