Dorothy Kitchen was Sedalia’s ‘Treemonisha’

I knew Treemonisha. Well, I should have written “a Treemonisha.” I certainly knew her as surely as if the fictional heroine of Scott Joplin’s opera by that name had been a real person. It took me 48 years to realize how similar Dorothy Kitchen and Joplin’s heroine were. When I did, I decided to blow the dust from my old scrapbooks and properly celebrate the life of one of the most remarkable women it was ever my privilege to know. Let me explain. Mrs. Dorothy Kitchen was my first principal at the Hubbard Elementary school, in Sedalia. I’ve previously explained the beginning of my teaching career, so I will just remind readers that when I first received my state teaching certificate in 1971, there were no high school positions in Sedalia where I lived at the time. The only open position in the entire school district was for a 5th, 6th, and 7th grade Social Studies and English teacher in the segregated Hubbard Elementary School and for which my faithful life-time teaching certificate qualified me. I was essentially to be a token Caucasian teacher in the all African American school in an effort by the district to delay mandatory desegregation (a full 17 years after Brown vs The Topeka Board of Education decision mandated it). Dorothy Kitchen, Hubbard School Photo, 1971(She hated to have her photo taken. We had