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Kansas Offers Rich African-American Heritage
The African-American heritage in the state of Kansas began before the Civil War and lives on today in many historic attractions and museums. Visitors can tour the places where the course of history was changed and learn about the people who changed it.
In the mid-1800s, the Adair family near Osawatomie opened their doors to famed abolitionist John Brown to help him hide escaped slaves traveling the Underground Railroad. The Adair cabin still stands and serves as the John Brown Museum State Historic Site. Exhibits featuring the Underground Railroad can also be found in Lawrence, center of the free state movement, at the Watkins Community Museum of History. The Kansas State Capitol in Topeka is home to the dramatic John Brown mural painted by John Steuart Curry, considered by many to be his finest work.
Lawrence also has several Underground Railroad sites in the city, including Fire Station No. 4, which was once Joel Grover’s stone barn used to organize small groups of runaway slaves for their next move further west. Grover had been sent to Kansas as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Society in 1854, a group known for its anti-slavery sentiments.
Black cavalry soldiers stationed at Kansas’ forts were dubbed “Buffalo Soldiers” by the American Indians because their hair resembled that of the buffalo. It was the black men of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry who were the first African-Americans to muster into the U.S. Army when the Civil War did break out. Hollywood gives much recognition to the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in the movie Glory.
| It was actually the slaves, fugitives, and freemen of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry who were the first to fight. These men mustered at Fort Scott months before their Massachusetts counterparts saw action. Many of Kansas’ fort museums have exhibits and monuments dedicated to the buffalo soldier. The Buffalo Soldier Memorial in Junction City, home of Fort Riley, includes a 9-foot bronze statue of the Buffalo Soldier and his horse. A 14-foot Buffalo Soldiers Monument, dedicated by General Colin Powell in 1992, is a moving tribute at Fort Leavenworth. |
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Fort Hays and Fort Larned feature other Buffalo Soldier exhibits. Childhood and military memorabilia from General Powell, Buffalo Soldier uniforms, freedom papers from former slaves, and Underground Railroad items are on display at the Richard Allen Cultural Center of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Leavenworth.
After the Civil War, freed slaves established all-black communities around the country. Nicodemus, established in 1877, is the only remaining all-black town west of the Mississippi River and is now a National Historic Site. The Township Hall serves as the visitors center and wagon excursions through Nicodemus leave from the Livery Company. The Nicodemus Emancipation Celebration each July includes Buffalo Soldier re-enactors and African-American cuisine and entertainment.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ordered the desegregation of American public schools. Monroe Elementary, formerly a segregated African American school, is now a National Historic Site and reopened in May 2004 with an interpretive center on the civil rights struggle. The historic school features interactive exhibits and audio-visual programs on the story of this court case and its impact on American society then and today.
Another Kansan, photographer Gordon Parks, is a Fort Scott native. His collection of photographs and poems on display in Fort Scott is one of the largest in the U.S. outside of the Library of Congress. Photographs from his movie, The Learning Tree, filmed in Fort Scott, many of his papers, and a signed copy of his book are displayed in the library at Pittsburg State University.
| You can follow the path of African-American history in Kansas at Wichita’s Kansas African-American Museum, which is housed in the refurbished 1917 Calvary Baptist Church, one of the oldest African-American churches in the state. At the Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita, you’ll learn that one-third of the cowboys who led the cattle drives were African-American. Former Missouri slave George Washington Carver farmed in Kansas from 1880-1884 and attended high school in Minneapolis, Kansas. The Ottawa County Historical Museum features a special exhibit dedicated to this innovative Kansas farmer. |
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For more information on these and other African-American heritage related attractions or events, please contact the Kansas Department of Commerce, Travel & Tourism Division, 1000 S.W. Jackson Street, Suite 100, Topeka, KS, 66612-1354, or by phone at (785) 296-2009. |
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