William A. Smith

William A. Smith (December 31, 1888 – July 21, 1968) was a justice of the Kansas Supreme Court from December 1, 1930, to March 1, 1956, and chief justice from March 1, 1956 to January 3, 1957.

Life and education Smith was born in Valley Falls, Kansas December 31, 1888 where he later attended school. He obtained his law degree in 1914 from Washburn University School of Law and was admitted to the bar that same year.

Career His early career was as the Jefferson County attorney, but only briefly before stopping to participate in World War I. He was elected to the attorney general position on an anti Ku Klux Klan platform. He then became Chief Justice automatically when William West Harvey resigned before the end of his term. Smith then retired January 3, 1957 for health reasons with the spare court position being filled by Fred Hall. On his resignation he indicated that his political life was not over telling the press "don't count me out of politics yet". The Webb case has been referred to as one of the key cases that served as a "prelude" to the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision, where the U.S. Supreme Court held that the concept of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. In Webb, the Kansas Supreme Court held that equal school facilities had to be for all children regardless of skin color. In his decision, Justice Smith described the action of the local school board to organize students into "black only" or "white only" schools as "a clear case of the school board doing by subterfuge, that is, by the arbitrary creation of an attendance district within the district itself and thereby segregating the colored children from the white children, what it could not do directly." He went on to write that "If the school district in its judgment so desire it may maintain two school buildings in the district and it may as a corollary of that divide the territory between the two schools and designate pupils from the territory who may attend one school and pupils from the other territory to attend the other schools. This allocation must be made, however, upon a reasonable basis without any regard at all as to color or race of the pupils within any particular territory. The standards and facilities for each school must be comparable. Colored and white pupils must be permitted to attend either school, depending on convenience, or some other reasonable basis."