Typically, in all 30,000 of the American History classes that I’ve taken, the main theme revolves around the government and how they affect history. My textbooks are all titled The American People, The American Experience, or America in the Global Context. Very rarely do we ever talk about specific people or news that happened on a micro level. Sure, you know, World War II is important, but I’ve learned about that before and I’ve sure that there were things going on during the war that had nothing to do with the war. That’s what I would like to know. Being in a class about Kansas History has done a little to satiate that desire, however we still related major events to how it affected Kansas.
I’m a very creative, authentic, and anti-authority person. I like to create original things or perform things in a way that no one else has. This gets me in trouble a lot of the time because I want to do things my way and not how someone else tells me to do it. In fact, in writing this blog I really tried to avoid talking about things or doing things that everyone else was already doing.
So anyway, while sitting in class stewing over the possible intricacies of learning the things I talked about in the first paragraph I realized something: it’s hard. How can you talk about things that aren’t particularly significant in the wide spectrum of things? What are the things that affect normal people’s lives throughout history? For example, in 40 years, what will people study about the 90s and the 20-otts? Let’s explore this shall we?
I didn’t graduate high school until 2001, so the global events of the 90’s didn’t have a significant impact on me. My dad worked full time, my mom worked part time while me and my brother were at school. My biggest interests were, music(band, choir, oldies, pop), wrestling, learning to drive, video games, learning how to talk to girls, and overcoming oppression by my parents. Times have changed. 10 years later my interests are well, still video games, the internet and how it has changed business and can be used as a tool to make money, traveling, dancing(i like to swing and hip-hop), business in general(you know, how to make money), and learning how to get over my social anxiety and be more open to people. These are all things that I say affect my life the biggest. It wasn’t until probably just this summer that I actually started to pay attention and care about political movements. I think basically, what I’m saying is that I would really like to learn about daily life throughout the time periods. Of course, then we probably wouldn’t get the full picture, god forbid. For now I’ll leave it up to VH1 to inform me about pop culture.
There was a really neat mini-series about the 60’s that came out a few years ago. It had Julia Stiles in it. It had a stereotypical family and then followed them as they got involved and were affected by all the things that happened in the 1960’s. I’m not entirely sure how accurate is was, but it was really neat to watch.
In the indigenous peoples class I’m in we just finished talking about the mascotting of Native Americans. The Champagne-Urbana Fighting Illini and the Florida state Seminoles have come under scrutiny in the past couple of years because of how they portray Natives with their mascots. While many people feel they purvey Indians in a positive light, most will argue that it simply extends a stereotype of savages. Oddly, it’s only the Universities and not the professional sports teams that are indicted with this. Apparently, most pro sports fans are simply just fans, unlike college students who actually become the mascot that their school embraces. Eg. I am a Jayhawk, but I’m not a Royal or Chief.
We all know where the Jayhawk came from, it was officially put into mascot history as a bird in 1912 when Henry Maloy decided to draw a picture of the bird to correspond with George “Dumpy” Bowle’s song, “I’m a Jayhawk”. Through the years it has evolved several times, finally ending on the version we know today, drawn by Hal Sandy
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In 2002, members of the Lawrence Convention and Visitor’s Bureau were trying to think of some fun activities to bring to Lawrence. Familiar with the “Cows on Parade” of New York and Houston, they decided to have some “Jayhawks on Parade”. After recruiting sponsorship and artists, the “Jayhawks on Parade” hit the streets in 2003.
Here are pictures of just a few of the 30 jayhawks that roamed the streets during this time. The first picture is of Hal Sandy with his Classic Jayhawk. See if you recognize the John Brown Jayhawk.
And if you’re really interested, here is a collage of all 30.
Happy Extra Credit Post, everybody!
Why does the term’ Inner-city’ always bring up conotations of unrest within me? Why will I never go to the Power and Light district?
After World War 1, when the middle class percentage was rising, more people moved from the inner-city out to the suburbs to live in Levittowns. Only those who could afford it, were able to move. Most black families were still fairly poverty stricken. Thus, they couldn’t afford to move. They were left to reside in their deteriorating apartments, and the inner-city was born.
But the reason, I’m afraid of the Power and Light district, I doubt has to due with the fact that many black families live there. It has to do with the high crime rate, and the fact that I know several people who have been robbed out there. Wait, I got it. It’s not that they’re black, race doesn’t typically lead to crime by itself. It’s probably because these families in the innercity were poor. They couldn’t fully provide for their children, they then grew up with less morals, plus more of a need to steal. Actually, if you’ve ever read “Freakonomics”, he has an entire chapter that talks about this fact.
Almost any downtown I’ve been to is pathetic looking. There’s the graffiti plastered buildings covered in cracks with For Sale signs on the front. And the couple of homeless looking people waiting on the Bus Stop bench.
Here’s a Herblock cartoon that paraphrases what I’m talking about:
I know very little about World War I and especially how it affected Kansas. I decided to do some research about it. I was able to find some information at Spencer. I think one of the big reasons why this war was so important was because of how much it affected everybody, not just people overseas. Here I have an excerpt from Graduate Magazine, June 1918:
“Of the University of Kansas men in the army and navy twenty-seven are members of the faculty and are absent from the University on leave of absence for the duration of the war. Additional faculty members are giving their time exclusively to other war work, such as the service of Doctor James Naismith and P.A.F. Appleboom in Y.M.C.A. work in France, Dean Olin Templin and Miss Elizabeth Sprague in the food administration office at Washington and other instructors in government laboratories and on munition plant construction work, and in other services….As an example of how thoroughly war needs raided the University, the department of psychology lost its entire faculty, with the exception of assistant instructors. Its three professors were taken by the army to make psychological tests in examining recruits for aviation and other special work. Seven members of the engineering faculty were taken and physical education department lost five of its faculty. Only this summer five more of the faculty of the department of French have been taken. Of forty-two graduates in the engineering classes of 1918, not one could attend commencement exercises to receive his diploma.”
And recently I’ve gotten in the bad habit of spoiling you guys by providing pictures. So, here I go again.
The Student Army Training Corps is pretty self-explanatory. It was an organization that helped prepare students or other local area men or draftees to prepare for war. Here we have the barracks.
The SATC headquarters force.
The SATC battalion on parade in 1918.
Here we have some young students training with wooden rifles. Fred Ellsworth, who Ellsworth hall is named after, is second from the right.
As we know, women served a great deal in the war as well: Either helping out on the homefront or serving overseas as nurses. I’m not quite sure what these women are doing. Let me know if you can figure it out. I assume it has something to do with nursing.
*click on any picture to see a larger version
I am doing my digital narrative on Civil Rights in Kansas. While researching things for this, I discovered a cool little website called Kuhistory.com. There is an interesting article about 5 days in July in 1970.
The jist of the story is how a former KU student, Rick “Tiger” Dowdell, 19, is shot and killed by police in downtown Lawrence. This sparks a week of protests, vandalism, and confrontations that culminates in the death of an 18-year-old KU freshman named Harry Nicholas “Nick” Rice on Oread Boulevard five days later.
It’s kind of a long article, and I don’t want to waste a bunch of time paraphrasing it so go here to read it. http://www.kuhistory.com/proto/story.asp?id=99
The reason I think this is so interesting is because I’ve heard about Alabama protests where African American’s are protesting for civil rights and get beaten, attacked by dogs, sprayed with hoses, etc. I’ve also heard about Vietnam protests that turn violent such as at Kent State. I had no idea that things like that ever happened in Lawrence. A cop shoots a black man, probably because he knows he can get away with it. Police tear gas a bunch of protestors too. What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. I have so many questions and no way to organize them.
It stirs up great frustration within me. It makes me worry about what the law thinks it can get away with. What atrocities are being committed under “government” that we may not even be aware of. A peaceful protest, and an 18 year old student winds up being killed, most likely from a police gunshot. When people get upset at me at work, I take heat from it. I can’t even imagine what would happen if I killed the customer. Holy schnikies.
It makes me feel proud though. That our little city isn’t immune to the bigger picture. That there are people here who will fight for their beliefs and demand change. I kind of want to start singing “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.
Now, I ask of you: What do you want changed? College campuses are where change starts. You’re at the age where you’re free minded enough and not set in you ways enough to set changes in action. You’re assignment for this week is find one thing about the world that you feel is wrong and take the first step to getting that changed. Years from now people could be saying, “I can’t believe the world used to be that way.”
I’ve always found graveyards, excuse me, I mean cemeteries, to be creepy. When I walk out to a grave site I can’t help but think about the fact that I’m literally walking over dead bodies. I end up having visions of skeletal arms reaching out of the ground and grabbing my legs. Perhaps, I should get rid of my copy of “Evil Dead”. My friend, Nick, believes that when you drive past a graveyard, that you’re supposed to hold your breath out of respect for the people who are no longer breathing. Don’t tell him I said this, but I think he’s also a little afraid that he’s going to breath in a spirit or something weird like that. HOWEVER! If I can get past my fear of cemeteries, so can you! And if you do, there are some interesting graves you can visit even right here in Lawrence! Come along shall we?
There are two main cemeteries in Lawrence: Oak Park Cemetery and Lawrence Memorial Cemetery. Aside from the neat tombstones, I also find it interesting just reading the inscriptions and dates of life. You can see when people lived and can even read a little into what people believed and what their morals were. For example, an inscription might read something about how a husband and wife loved each other and now they’re together in heaven, or it might say something about how they loved their dog, or loved being a cowboy. Oak Hill Cemetery has some famous gravestones. Check it out.
*These are all just thumbnails. Click on any picture to see a larger version.
James H. Lane: Abolitionist, Jayhawker, Crazy-haired bleeding Kansas, you should know him.
Forrest C. “Phog” Allen: KU Basketball Coach and Olympic Basketball Coach, Allen Fieldhouse is named after him
Lucy Hobbs Taylor: the first woman in the United States to graduate from dental school
Charles L. Robinson: 1st Governor of Kansas 1861-1863
They also have a memorial to the victims of Quatrill’s Raid
The front of the marker reads: “Dedicated to the Memory of the One Hundred and Fifty Citizens who Defenseless Fell Victims to the Inhuman Ferocity of the Border Guerillas Led by the Infamous Quantrell in his Raid upon Lawrence August 21, 1863 Erected May 30th, 1886″
On the back it reads: “The Roll of their Names may be Found in the City Clerks Office and in the Records of the State Historical Society in Topeka.”
Across the Street in Memorial Park is another pretty popular grave site. His name is James Naismith and he invented basketball. He coached at KU and ironically is the losingest coach KU has ever had.
And lastly, located across the street from the Lied is a small little graveyard called “Pioneer Cemetery of Lawrence” There are some really neat old gravestones back in here. A lot of them are from Quantrill’s Raid and others date all the way back to the 1850’s. Here are some pictures.
Hey kids! Fill out this quiz and you could win a free iPod! All you have to do is read the following quiz (it’s only 5 questions long), pick the answer that best suits you, then refer to the answer key at the bottom. No cheating now, don’t look at the answers before you’ve taken the quiz. Comment on this blog and you’ll automatically be entered to win a free iPod. Have fun!
No Purchase necessary. Results not typical.
1. President Andrew Jackson, with the help of the Superindentant of Indian Affairs, William Clark, decide that Native Americans are allowed to reside on land, while not allowed to hold title to land, but can only do so in certain preselected sectors of the Louisiana purchase. You:
- A) You try your hardest and even fight to maintain your hold on the current land where you preside, but are ultimately forced to move with your family and other Cherokee tribesmen up to present-day Oklahoma, crying all the way.
- B) You cheer because this means that there is going to be much more land for you and your family to claim. You pity the Natives, but hey, they ain’t you, right?
- C) You show little respect for the Native Americans because this means you have to cut through their territory on your way west. When you arrive in the Kansas Territory you decide to squat on their land. You justify it because they don’t actually own the land, plus it’s so beautiful even if there aren’t that many tree.
- D) You grown in agony because this means that your masters are about to gain much more land for growing cotton. And guess who is going to have to pick all of that cotton. That’s right, you are.
2) It’s April, 1861, and the Civil War has erupted tearing the country in two. You react by:
- A) Smoking your peacepipe and continuing your agriculture. Some of your Cherokee brothers get involved in the war, but you don’t feel the need because your soveriegnty has never been truly recognized by the US government. But you secretly hope the Confederates get punished for stealing your land.
- B) A farmer by day, a mercenary by night, you join the ranks of William Quantrill, Jesse James, and Bloody Bill Anderson in their raid on Lawrence. You burn buildings and kill men. Afterwards, you ride back home and continue farming as if nothing had ever happened.
- C) Following the footsteps of radicals like John Brown and James Lane, you partake in several excursions into Missouri to harass and frighten many innocent people. You loot towns, steal livestock, and destroy statues and houses.
- D) You believe in the Northern cause because you think it will ultimately end slavery. So you join the Union army and are involved in fighting in Kansas.
3) President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law a few years back. In order to gain land, all you need to do is live on land and cultivate it for 5 years and it’s yours to own. You react by:
- A) Getting agitated. Why would you want to own any land, let alone, stay in one place. The buffalo and deer herds move around, so that means that you’re going to need to move around too. But how can you move somewhere else knowing that when you come back someone may have stolen your land?
- B) You see this as a great opportunity for you to head west. You would like to escape your Missouri heritage especially since your brother fought for the union army and you know he would be harassed and possibly killed if he ever returned home.
- C) Begin advertising Kansas as a great place to come and live. You know there are many newly freed black people who would love to come up here and live and you want to see them prosper. If Governor St. John approves of it, then you approve of it.
- D) Your new job as a crop-duster isn’t helping you make any money. You are segregated from whites in restaurants, hotels, even at drinking fountains, and you are offended by having to pay poll taxes. You think this might be the time to make the exodus to Kansas and start a new life in a black community.
4) Railroads are being built and are starting to connect one side of the nation to the other. How does this affect you?
- A) This doesn’t affect you much. Your family continues to be pushed west and you are becoming more isolated from the rest of the continent anyway. You think more and more that accepting christianity and white ways of life might be the way to go, especially since the buffalo that you hunt seem to be becoming more and more rare.
- B) This is terrific! Now you’re able to make better profits for all your agriculture and hunting. The trains make it easier for you to take your goods to bigger, better, and higher paying markets. Oxen, you go ahead and stay home. I can handle this one on my own.
- C) This gets you excited as well. Your state is starting to grow. It’s becoming diverse which is interesting. You are establishing a sovereign identity. And you too can take all of the wheat and corn you’ve been growing to Kansas City much easier.
- D) This is exciting for you too. This can help your black cities to grow. The only problem is that the railroad bypasses the city by a couple of miles. This makes it hard to receive goods and let other Black Americans know that your city even exists. You begin to think that it might be time to move.
5) It’s 1879. How do acquire an education?
- A) Since your family lives on a land plot, you don’t see your family that much. You pretty much live at a boarding school where they teach you English and Math. And you learn a lot about White, English history. You have a hard time with it because you really want to see your parents and you don’t really believe all of the bad things they teach you about your ancestors.
- B) Your family lives on a large 160-acre farm. It’s about 20 miles to the nearest town, so you and your sisters receive lessons from your mother. You each have a slate that you use to learn math and english. You read as much as you can, but you don’t have that many books. Occasionally your father and your brother have to go into town, and if you’ve done all your chores you get to go with them and you sit in the parlor and read as much as you can.
- C) Every morning your mom wakes you up and sends you down to the schoolhouse. WYou have about 20 kids in your class ranging from ages 5 through 18. Its cool to learn but your teacher is very strict. She makes you sit up straight all day and if you speak out of turn she spanks you with a board. Your favorite subject is recess. One winter you got the mumps and had to stay home from school for two months.
- D) You’re 22 and you’re excited to finally learn how to read. Since you’ve never been allowed to read or write, this is a great opportunity. You’re actually thinking that you’ll become a teacher or possibly open a shop or some sort.
That’s end of the quiz! Now figure out if you answer mostly A’s, B’s, C’s, or D’s and consult the chart below to see what kind of a person you are.
Mostly A’s.
-You’re a Native American. You take the good with the bad. Having relations with the English open good opportunities for trade. Unfortunately, they have forced you off of your land and have taken up shooting bison for sport. This is making it harder for you to keep your normal way of life. Once you used to grow and hunt your own food, recently you’ve had to rely upon white men to provide food for you.
Mostly B’s.
-You’re a Bushwhacker. You’re a member of the union; however, you still think slavery is all right. When those Free-Staters mind their own business, you’re perfectly happy. But lately you’ve been thinking it might be time to make a change.
Mostly C’s.
-You’re a Jayhawker. You believe that people deserve to be free and you’re willing to die to prove your point. You’ve caused trouble sure, but those people in Missouri started it.
Mostly D’s.
-You’re an exoduster. As a former slave, you’ve realized the opportunity that comes with being free. The only problem is that you need to leave the persecution of your home. You see a flier describing the opportunity of Kansas, so you head that way to make a new life for yourself
*most of these facts were taken from lecture, some info is from the textbook, and anything else is from Kansas Memory. I tried to figure out a way to add sub or superscripts and it didn’t work out.
I glared at my brother from the right side of the car. I took my finger and drew an imaginary line down the middle of the backseat. “Everything on this side of the car is mine and you’re not allowed to touch, everything on that side of the car is yours and I’m not allowed to touch.”
“What if,” he said, “I stick my arm into your side of the car like this and wave it around. Technically, I’m not touching your side of the car.”
“You’re still in my side! And so’s your blanket.”
I’d like to think that as I’ve grown up things would have gotten more sophisticated, more understanding, perhaps less childish. I’m little pleased and a little disappointed to say that they have performed none of the above.
I find that I’m torn on my status for the Indian Removal Act. On one side, I would like to boast Darwin’s survival of the fittest. And on the other side I would like to promote the preservation of a peoples. Both have strong points that I will demonstrate.
I feel that European expansion was inevitable. Our world today is so connected that it almost seems impossible for Indians to have remained living the way they were. Plus, I believe in the butterfly effect. So, if history had happened any other way, there is a chance that I may not be alive today and that would make me very sad. Actually, it wouldn’t make me anything, I would have no existence. Then, alot of what killed the indians was actually disease. Disease coupled with colonizing did many of the indians in. Almost 50% of indian populations died due to smallpox. There was no way of Europeans knowing that this would happen. This, unfortunately, would make it hard for indians to defend themselves against Europeans in the way that they previously could before their populations were wiped out.
I do find it interesting that Spain, England, France, and Holland, were all so intent on turning the Americas into an empire of their own. They knew Asia existed, India, and the northern territories, yet they weren’t trying to go conquer any of that area. Could we have peaceably co-existed and not captured and enslaved indians, steal their land, try to save them by forcing our religion on them? Who knows. I do find it funny that during the 1800s, society must not have been so “pro-historic preservation” as it is now, otherwise, they would have wanted to maintain that history, or at least tried to have learned more.
In terms of ‘Is it possible to own land?’ I say that yes, yes it is. Nowadays, when you go to buy a home, you’re not actually buying the house, you’re actually buying the land of which the house is on. That’s all the justification I have for that right now.
Now if I could just figure out a way to keep my brother on his side of the car. Hmmmm………
