Kenneth W. McFarland (October 12, 1906 – March 6, 1985) born in Caney, Kansas was an educator, public speaker, writer and conservative commentator.
Many of the teachers he promoted to principal and assistant administrator positions were former coaches, who tended to have similar views of the role of education in local life as he did.
[5]: 381 McFarland also gained the favor of Topeka's civic and community leaders through his devotion to another aspect of the status quo: maintaining what racial segregation existed in the city's schools.
Caldwell and other Blacks who believed that their community benefited from Topeka's lighter segregation since the schools there, unlike many in the South, took the judicial "separate but equal" mandate more seriously.
[5]: 384 In the late 1940s McFarland began to take more time away from his duties as superintendent to go on nationwide speaking tours, the proceeds from which he used to assemble a large horse farm on the west side of Topeka where he and his wife lived.
[5]: 404–5 McFarland's supporters campaigned vigorously, afraid that another administration might not be as invested in defending segregation in the recently filed Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit as his was.
Some were related-party transactions, such as a $3,000 purchase of furniture from a company owned by McFarland's secretary's husband, an amount well over the $200 threshold state law at the time required be covered by a contract executed by the school board, which had not been made.
His speeches consistently used humor, as well as engaging speaking techniques of alliteration (astronaut to tall space alien: "Take me to your ladder lady, I'll see your leader later!")
Along with Frank Emerson Harris, he produced a series of booklets on the preservation of "basic Americanism," regarded as an expression of modern political conservatism.