Kansas History

Novel in progress. This is a copyrighted working draft. Edit suggestions welcome.

The legacy of Slavery and Jim Crow comes to play in a series of dramatic events in the heartland and beyond, and an ensemble of unforgettable characters are forced to choose between lies and truth, life and death, with implications for their futures, their relationships and for the the future of democracy in the United States.

This dissertation problematizes the definition of autobiography by considering the Bruce McKinney Collection, an archive at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, a communal autobiography of the lesbian and gay community of Kansas. While generally used as a research tool, I argue that the archive can also be a form of life writing, consisting of a narrative that moves between documents and items found within the collection. Collected by numerous people over the course of forty years, I present the Bruce McKinney Collection as a communal autobiography of lesbian and gay life in Kansas. The archive demonstrates the lesbian and gay community's desire to acquire queer space and establish queer visibility in towns across Kansas. Through acts of resistance, whether taking legal action against a major university, proposing social changes through a city council, or by having sex in public spaces, the lesbian and gay community has reconfigured social space to accommodate their own community. In turn, the queer archive reflects the history of this change. Itself a queer space, the archive grants legitimacy to the lesbian and gay community simply by existing. It acts as a form of resistance as people have gathered and preserved the different documents that reflect lesbian and gay history. Through the resistant act of collecting lesbian and gay history, the lesbian and gay community of Kansas has created its own communal autobiography, specifically The Bruce McKinney Collection.

A history of the Welsh immigrant community of Bala, Kansas, founded in 1870 by the Welsh Land and Emigration Society, which purchased land from the Kansas Pacific Railroad for the purpose of establishing a Welsh colony. While Bala was a thriving Welsh-American community in the late 19th century, it fell into decline in the 20th century. The article discusses some of the prominent members of the community and their migration trajectories from Wales to Kansas.

The Walnut Creek massacre occurred July 18, 1865. Ten teamsters, eight white and two African Americans, were killed by a party of Kiowa warriors near Fort Zarah, Kansas. The remains were uncovered during a storm in 1973. The report summarizes the history and physical evidence surrounding the burials. Eighteen buttons and thirteen iron projectile points are described and illustrated.

This paper examines the development of the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Black American Islamic religious organisation from 1933 to 1945, a period largely unexplored by academics. Through the lens of Father Prophet Mohammed Bey and Mother Jesus Rosie Bey—two controversial vernacular Moorish-American leaders in Kansas City—I hope to illustrate how Kansas City Moors coped with the organisation’s fissiparous tendencies and exegetically revised and reframed Moorish-American Prophet Noble Drew Ali’s 1920s Black Asiatic Orientalist doctrines vis-à-vis the 1930s and 1940s subversive socio-political culture. In the process, both Father Prophet Mohammed Bey and Mother Jesus Rosie Bey shaped and advocated an early form of Black theology and Black power, though they differed in their modus operandi. While Father Prophet Mohammed Bey militantly confronted Kansas City’s local racist institutions, Mother Jesus Rosie Bey internationalized and politicized the Kansas City Moors to collaborate/contend with the looming spectre of Japanese agent provocateurs, America’s Selective Service Act, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogations. While the size and scope of the Kansas City Moors remained limited, their unique orientation to militant Moorish Islam is vital for historians’ understanding of the re-flowering of Moorish-American Islamic activism in the 1930s as well as the eventual decay of the religious organisation by 1945, due in part to the theological softening of other Moorish communities.

Personal and professional reflections on the life and impact of an unsung civil rights hero, Lucinda Wilson Todd, the initiating and organizing plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) Published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Decision.

FORECLOSURE FRAUD ON THE COURT U.S. BANK LACK OF STANDING

Finally the good Judges of the State of Kansas have taken on all the criminal Banking Cartels in the United States, and for once have ruled against U.S. Bank acting as an alleged Trustee in a case of unlawful foreclosure.

U.S. Bank never owned the note. It was with most certainly sold to the Federal National Mortgage Association ( Fannie Mae ) and paid off in full. Then U.S. Bank most likely made copies of the note and packaged them into Certificates of alleged Mortgage Backed Securities ( MBS ) of which many State and Federal Judges hold as private investments.

No American Homeowner should allow any corrupt Judge to allow any third party to steal their homes without the original documentation ( Note and Deed of Trust/Mortgage ), should demand to see the originals, and have the right to a trial by Jury to decide the facts of the case.

Twenty three million ( 23,000,000 ) homes and families left homeless since the financial crisis in 2008.

"The crazy quilt was born, hit its zenith of popularity, and faded from high fashion all within the last quarter of the nineteenth century," writes Marin F. Hanson, assistant curator at the International Quilt Study Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Composed of irregularly shaped and randomly placed pieces of fabric-usually silk-and embellished with profuse embroidery, the crazy quilt was a product of many influences: the greater availability of silk fabrics, the philosophies of the aesthetic movement, a new fascination with Japanese design, and the introduction of English needlework styles." To help us understand how this essentially "urban fad" penetrated rural America, here Hanson examines a crazy quilt produced by Eva Wight of Saline County, Kansas, in 1891. "Examining Eva Wight's quilt in its various contexts, therefore, helps us understand how late-nineteenth-century quiltmaking in central Kansas may not have been radically different from quiltmaking all over America."

The Last Chance Store in Council Grove, Kansas was constructed by the Westport firm of Northrup & Chick in the spring of 1857.  It was built to trade with travelers on the Santa Fe Trail and with the Kaw Indians.  Construction of the Last Chance Store was completed in 1857 and the building has remained relatively intact and unchanged for nearly 160 years. Over this time the building has been occupied fairly continuously by a series of more than 15 businesses or families. The building had several advantages which were conducive to preserving artifacts from its various inhabitants. First, the building possessed a cellar under its south half with a clay floor that was periodically prone to flooding and then cracking when it dried out. This allowed objects to fall into the cracks and be preserved. Second, the main floor had a crawl space beneath a little over half its north side. The crawl space had no access doors or windows, and it appears that except for a few very short intervals this subfloor area has remained isolated. Third, the owners of the site since 1955 have been dedicated to preserving the site and its history. Therefore, a large number of artifacts were found at the site, which represents the entire span of its historic occupation. Archeological excavation at the site was the focus of the Kansas Archeological Training Program (KATP), in June 2016.

Two trails are reported here. One ran along the crest of the Flint Hills from Oklahoma to Nebraska. The other led from Pawnee villages in central Nebraska to the Great Bend of the Arkansas River. Both of these trails, and others in the Central Plains followed the divides between stream systems in order to obtain the easiest route of travel. The trails have great potential to illuminate the archaeology of the region. Associated sites include villages, campsites, cairns, quarries, burials, petroglyphs, and sacred animal lodges.

Between 1854 and 1861, the struggle between pro-and anti-slavery factions over Kansas Territory captivated Americans nationwide and contributed directly to the Civil War. Combining political, social, and military history, Bleeding Kansas contextualizes and analyzes prewar and wartime clashes in Kansas and Missouri and traces how these conflicts have been remembered ever since. Michael E. Woods’s compelling narrative of the Kansas-Missouri border struggle embraces the diverse perspectives of white northerners and southerners, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. This wide-ranging and engaging text is ideal for undergraduate courses on the Civil War era, westward expansion, Kansas and/or Missouri history, nineteenth-century US history, and other related subjects. Supported by primary source documents and a robust companion website, this text allows readers to engage with and draw their own conclusions about this contentious era in American History.

The 1930s was a tumultuous period for agriculture in Kansas.  Drought, soil erosion, swarms of insects and notorious dust storms were but a few of the hardships that Kansas farm families faced as they struggled to survive what was arguably the toughest recovery period in the history of Kansas agriculture.  “Surviving the Dirty Thirties” examines four Kansas farm family’s survival during these challenging times through the use of mechanization to increase production, diversification to adapt to the changing environmental and economic climate, and the use of varied market strategies to improve profitability as markets fluctuated.    While many crop yields decreased in average yields throughout the state, the total acres planted per year increased by the end of the decade, and overall grain output statewide remained relatively unchanged despite a severe lack of precipitation.  The story of these four families provides a compelling insight as to how some Kansas farm families were able to survive the Dirty Thirties.

The Kaw Mission was constructed for the Kansa (also known as the Kanza or Kaw) in 1850 north of their new reservation near present-day Council Grove. The Mission was constructed of native limestone and built large enough to accommodate 50 students. In addition to the Mission, a smoke house, a workshop, and a well were built. The school opened in May of 1851 under the direction of Thomas Huffaker. The property was run by the Methodist Episcopal Church South until 1854 when the government shut it down due to excessive cost. During the three years of operation the school reportedly averaged about 30 students, all boys, who were orphans or dependents of the tribe. In the years since its construction the Mission has had several functions: a Mission, a school house for area white children, a council house, a court house, a meeting house, an informal hotel, a private residence, and finally a museum.  In 1971 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Archeological investigations of the Mission began in 2016 with more intensive excavations taking place in 2018. All the investigations were part of the Kansas Archeology Training Program. The work recovered artifacts and features from the Mission period - including a blacksmith shop, the Civil War, when it was a private residence, and its time as a museum.

This published interview discusses the research done on North American runestones during my time at Sam Houston State University, focusing specifically on  the so-called Kansas City runestone carved  in Anglo-Saxon runes by an English couple in 1888 to document their recent marriage.

A comparison between the Kansas Court of Appeals' treatment of transsexual identity in In re Gardiner and a Texas appellate court's treatment of the same issue in Littleton v. Prange.  This article appeared in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, 70:257 (2001).

The Last Chance Store was built in 1857 to trade with Santa Fe Trail travelers and Kaw Indians, who lived just south of Council Grove. Apparently it served in that capacity for only brief periods between 1857 and 1859. In the early 1860s the building became a temporary residence for three families at different times. It also served as a barracks and headquarters for a cavalry unit, temporarily stationed in Council Grove during the Civil War: The building was used as a grocery store in the latter half of the 1870s, a corn crib, the permanent residence of the William Tolbert family for 50 years, and then a historic site. During its 160-year lifetime the structure remained relatively intact and unchanged. The last private owners from 1955 until 2015 were dedicated to preserving the site and its history. Once in state ownership, an archeological investigation was undertaken by the 2016 Kansas Archeology Training Program field school. The large number of artifacts found during the project represent very nearly the entire span of its historic occupation.

Intervention pour "Camera Memoria, séminaire sur les histoires de la photographie” à l'Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot.

Entre 1907 et 1913, L. W. Halbe, 14 ans en 1907, pris plus de 4 000 photographies. Sur ces 4 000 clichés environ 1 500 nous sont parvenus intacts sous forme de négatifs sur plaque de verre de format 5 x 7 pouces, aujourd’hui jalousement conservés par la société historique du Kansas à Topeka. Les photographies couvrent un large éventail de sujets, mais se déploient uniquement au sein de la petite communauté rurale dans laquelle L. W. Halbe résidait. Aux portraits des habitants et de sa famille se disputent les images de différents métiers, les évènement climatiques (neiges, inondations), les moments de la communauté (cirques, foires, matches de baseball), les paysages, les lieux communaux (écoles, églises, courthouses), etc. Cette archive, déjà très riche, s’accompagne du journal intime précis et exhaustif que Halbe tint durant ses années-là.
Cet ensemble pose l’épineuse question des enjeux, conscients ou non, d’une telle photographie pour le praticien, et de ses usages, attendus ou non, par les différents spectateurs (personnes photographiées, Time-Life reprenant les photographies, la société historique du Kansas, etc.). Comme de nombreux « amateurs » de l’époque, L. W. Halbe se situe à la frontière de la photographie commerciale et du hobby appris dans les magazines pour jeunes garçons : s’il monnaye dès le départ ses services, de nombreuses photographies ont une vocation domestique. Mais c’est plutôt la position liminale de l’adolescent-photographe au sein de la communauté qui nous semble pertinente. L’ensemble photographique devient alors un signe de l’étendue et du fonctionnement des réseaux de sociabilité de l’opérateur dans sa communauté. Nous chercherons donc à retracer ce que ces mouvements dans l’espace et dans les couches sociales construisent comme image de la communauté.

Between 1907 and 1914 in the High Plains of Northwest Kansas, schoolchildren were asked by a local judge to compete in a map-drawing contest. Sixty-one schoolchildren drew fifty-eight maps of their congressional townships. Each map was to be accompanied by an « historical note » which depicted topographical features as well as historical events of the township, such as Indian raids or political conflicts. The open call was written by the Judge and circulated by local newspapers. The maps were produced through the system of country schools, and evaluated by a committee at the Normal School. The Judge would then send prizes to the winners and the maps to the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka for preservation. The resulting archive raises questions of cartography, local history, and the (trans)formation of an identity through an appropriation, both material and symbolic, of a land and its past, but it also stands as a sign of the institutional changes in the Plains at the beginning of the 20th century. My aim is to question this interaction between the vernacular and the official and to see how, far from opposing each other, these two elements of community life interplay in the social construction of a place.

The congregants thanked God that they weren’t like all those hopeless people outside the church, bound for hell. So the Westboro Baptist Church’s Sunday service began, and Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a curious observer, wondered why anyone would seek spiritual sustenance through other people’s damnation. It is a question that piques many a witness to Westboro’s more visible activity—the “GOD HATES FAGS” picketing of funerals. In God Hates, sociologist Barrett-Fox takes us behind the scenes of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church. The first full ethnography of this infamous presence on America’s Religious Right, her book situates the church’s story in the context of American religious history—and reveals as much about the uneasy state of Christian practice in our day as it does about the workings of the Westboro Church and Fred Phelps, its founder.

God Hates traces WBC’s theological beliefs to a brand of hyper-Calvinist thought reaching back to the Puritans—an extreme Calvinism, emphasizing predestination, that has proven as off-putting as Westboro’s actions, even for other Baptists. And yet, in examining Westboro’s role in conservative politics and its contentious relationship with other fundamentalist activist groups, Barrett-Fox reveals how the church’s message of national doom in fact reflects beliefs at the core of much of the Religious Right’s rhetoric. Westboro’s aggressively offensive public activities actually serve to soften the anti-gay theology of more mainstream conservative religious activism. With an eye to the church’s protest at military funerals, she also considers why the public has responded so differently to these than to Westboro's anti-LGBT picketing.

With its history of Westboro Baptist Church and its founder, and its profiles of defectors, this book offers a complex, close-up view of a phenomenon on the fringes of American Christianity—and a broader, disturbing view of the mainstream theology it at once masks and reflects.

University Press of Kansas, 2016.

Slavery on the Periphery traces the rise and fall of chattel slavery on the Kansas-Missouri border from the earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War, exploring how its presence shaped life on this critical geographical, political, and social fault line. Kristen Epps explores how this dynamic, small-scale system--characterized by slaves' diverse occupations, close contact between slaves and slaveholders, a robust hiring market, and abroad marriages--emerged from an established upper South slaveholding culture. Awareness of space and local landscapes was also a defining feature of slaves' experiences, because slave mobility could be a powerful means of resistance. This mobility became particularly crucial when the sectional conflict escalated in the 1850s and 1860s, as both enslaved and white residents became central players in a violent national struggle over the future of slavery in America.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Epps makes clear that slavery's expansion into Kansas was more than a theoretical, ideological debate. Chattel slavery was already extending its grasp into the West. By foregrounding African Americans' place in the border narrative, Epps illustrates how slavery's presence on this geographic periphery set the stage for the Civil War and emancipation here, as it did elsewhere in the United States.

For more than a century the Padilla Monument, has supposedly marked the site where Father Juan de Padilla was killed in 1542. However, it is instead most likely an ancient Indian guide, or landmark, erected along a prehistoric Indian trail which passed through the area.

Visitors to the Pawnee Indian Village State Historic Site near Republic, Kansas are greeted by a granite monument commemorating one of the great moments in the vexillological history of the state: ERECTED BY THE STATE OF KANSAS, 1901, To mark the site of the Pawnee Republic, where LIEUT. ZEBULON M. PIKEcaused the Spanish flag to be lowered and the flag of the United States to be raised,September 29, 1806.  To most who view the monument, it is yet another historical marker noting an event of which they had never heard. To the vexillologist, however, it is a challenge—another legend etched in stone that needs to be investigated and verified. Once widely believed to be the site of the first U.S. flag-raising in Kansas, scholars no longer consider this village the one visited by Pike in 1806. However, the legend persists and the story resurfaces from time to time in popular accounts of Kansas history. This paper will examine the story of the Pike-Pawnee flag incident in four areas: 1) an examination of the primary sources that record the incident; 2) the growth of the story as a Kansas legend; 3) the scholarly debate over where the incident actually occurred, and 4) actions being taken to correct the monument.