You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2008.
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
.
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.”
