Vietnam Era Protest in Topeka

There is photo on www.kansasmemory.org/item/213152 that shows a peaceful Vietnam War protest by college students on the steps of the capital in Topeka Kansas. The date of the rally was May 13, 1970. The students were protesting the United States invasion of Cambodia. Students wanted Governor Robert Docking to pass legislation that would make it illegal for any citizen of Kansas to serve overseas unless a formal declaration of war was declared by Congress. The Governor listened to the students but in the end did nothing. The picture is just like any other you would see during the Vietnam Era, people protesting a war that was very unpopular. The thing that caught my eye while scanning the picture was that most if not all of the protesters were white. Many white American males fought and died in Vietnam, but a large contingent of the American troops in Vietnam were African-American. It is strange to see only whites protesting in Topeka when the war affected both white and black young men.

This protest was during the Civil Rights Era and race relations were strained to say the least. 1970 is the same year as the days of rage in Lawrence Kansas. Beth Bailey does a good job in her book, “Sex in the Heartland,” of explaining how on edge everybody was in that period. It is odd to see a Vietnam protest in a relatively progressive state when it came to race relations with no African-Americans in the picture. There are pictures from elsewhere in the country that show black and white standing side by side protesting the war. I would wager that it happened in Kansas too, it is just interesting that in the limited number of photo’s we have from the demonstrations in Kansas, African-Americans do not seem to be represented.

Sources:

www.kansasmemory.org/item/213152

Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, First Harvard University Press 2002

More than Brown

The documentary that we watched in class on Brown vs. The Board of Education Topeka made some very interesting points that I had not either heard or thought of. The way it is taught, most people think that Brown v. Board was a case of one man that wanted his daughter to go to a school that was close to their home. The reason she could not go to the school was because she was African-American. Brown got upset and sued the school district and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a surprise to learn that their were four other cases that were part of the Supreme Court case. The movie made a good point in saying that the reason that Brown v. Board was chosen as the lead case was because of its location. Kansas is neither a northern or southern state, it has similarities with both the north and south. So to avoid the traditional north vs. south battle, the case from Kansas was chosen. This move and the moves throughout the Brown case were brilliant by the lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Not enough credit is given to all the lawyers for the case; the only one that anybody hears about is Marshall because of his fame with the NAACP. They participants of the initial tests of trying to get black children into white schools and the lawyers that tried the case in Kansas deserve as much credit as Marshall. The lawyers in Kansas had the presence of mind to bring the court before the Federal Court in Topeka. The court ruled against the plaintiffs on the grounds of Plessey vs. Ferguson, but did say that segregation had psychological affect on the children. This would be used later at the Supreme Court level to find in favor of the plaintiffs. The people associated with this case do not get the credit they deserve.

Klan in Kansas?

I came across an article on the www.kshs.org website entitled, Race Relations in the Sunflower State. I thought it looked interesting so I gave it a quick read, its not often you run across a title that has something negative to say about Kansas when it comes to race. Growing up in Kansas I was taught about the brave Jayhawkers that fought to keep Kansas free. Next comes the former slaves who are welcomed into Kansas with open arms, it is seen as a haven from the evil South. Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education is one of the defining moments for Kansas and the Civil Rights era. Reading the article I soon realized that the darker years of race relations in Kansas had been left out of the textbooks. The author poses the question;

How could the “free state” that opened its doors to fugitive slaves and freedom simultaneously be a land of Jim Crow and Indian Removal?

The author argues that it is hard to put a label on Kansas as a Northern or Southern state in years after the Civil War until the 1930’s because it had characteristics of both. As of 1933, 206 men had been lynched in Kansas since the end of the Civil War. 38 of these men were black but because that ratio was much lower than those of state’s in the South, Kansas was written into the history books as a state with little race problems.

A striking fact came to my attention while reading the piece; it was the overwhelming presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Kansas during the 1920’s. The author sites that they were about 100,000 members of the Klan in Kansas during the 1920’s. To those who thought Kansans were the good guys, including myself, this comes as quite a shock. While the Klan did not have quite the racial hatred is has today, it still had African Americans, Jews, and Roman Catholics on its list of primary targets. As I read on, a little of my faith in Kansans was restored when I learned that William Allen White and other prominent Kansas journalists played a crucial role in Kansas being the first state to expel the Klan in 1927. By the 1930’s students at the University of Kansas were protesting racial discrimination in state politics.

It is interesting to learn that Kansas had and still has its demons even though most hold it on a peddle stool when it comes to race relations. Kansas is an interesting place during the reform movements of the early 20^th Century. On one hand Kansas is leading the way in the progressive movement and women’s rights. On the other Kansas is still stuck in the racially turbulent past.

Source:

Leiker, James N. Race Relations in the Sunflower State. www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2002autumn_leiker.pdf

The Slaves Were Free, but the Problems Had Just Started

With the end of the Civil War the United States was left with a mess of a situation, the South must be reconstructed and former slaves must now be integrated into society. What both sides, the Republican North and the Democratic South, did not see was the problems that the freed slaves would pose to both sides.

Before the war, the negro vote counted but three votes for every five men in presidential elections. Now five men count five votes.

This excerpt was the lead paragraph in the Wyandotte Gazette article entitled Why Republicans Squeal. The paragraph was a quote from the Kansas Democrat, a pro-Democrat newspaper in Topeka, the quote speaks of the three fifths compromise that was made prior to the Civil War. In states that had slavery, each slave would be counted as 3/5 of a vote. After the civil war, former slaves were counted as one vote per man. This posed a huge problem for Republicans; it gave the southern states an advantage in Congress. Each of these men would be counted as one, giving the South more delegates in Congress. With Jim Crow laws and intimidation from whites, the freed slaves would be counted as a body only and not allowed to vote.

On the flip side of the issue, the newly freed slaves posed a problem for southern society. Quite simply, they did not want freed slaves living amongst them and they certainly did not want them having the power to vote.

NO! The blacks have no right under the sun to vote. He has never had the right. The ballot came into his possession by illegal means and it must be taken from him.

It is clear from this excerpt from a newspaper in Mississippi that was later published in the Topeka Colored Citizen, that southerners would do anything in their power to see that blacks could not and would not vote.

The freeing of the slaves, while necessary and long overdue, lead to a variety of seen and unforeseen problems for the both sides. The North had to deal with the new citizens of the US and what that meant to the balance of power in Congress. The South was faced with reconstruction and the turning of the southern society as they knew on its ear. Neither side had planned for these problems, if they had the reconstruction era might have gone more smoothly for all.

Sources:

Why the Republicans Squeal www.kansasmemory.org/item/210620/page/1

What the Rebels of the South Threaten to Do www.kansasmemory.org/item/210629/page/1

What white Kansas really fought for in Bleeding Kansas

High school history classes taught in the Midwest focus a substantial amount of time on Bleeding Kansas due to its proximity and the effect it had on United States history. In most cases Kansans are portrayed as clean cut abolitionists that were fighting to free Kansas of the horrible institution of slavery. On the flip side, Missourians and pro-slavery settlers living in Kansas are cast as dirty, foul mouthed ruffians who will stop at nothing to bring Kansas into the union as a slave state. These two sweeping generalizations are simply not true as Nicole Etcheson points out in her writing “Bleeding Kansas, Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era.” Not all Kansans are clean cut as one pro-slavery man describes;

The havoc made by the Abolitionists, how they have killed the Settlers, or have driven them from their possessions, burned down their dwellings, and plundered or stolen every thing they could carry off, and that not one pro slavery man is left south of the Kansas river in peaceable possession of his property. (Ethcheson 121)

Some Free State Kansans were just as ruthless and back handed as their Missouri counterparts were portrayed. Kansans were thought of as fighting for the slaves, when in reality most of them were fighting for the right to choose if their state was free or not and had little care for slaves at all. In one instance a slave tried to join Jim Lane’s small army, Lane told him to go back to his master. (Etcheson 120) This is evidence of how little the whites in Kansas actually cared about the blacks. They fought for them in name only, they used the plight of the slaves to bring their struggle in Kansas to the forefront of the National conscience. While some like John Brown did deeply care about slavery and wanted blacks to be treated as equals, most did not like slavery but wanted no part of being on equal terms legally with a black man. Bleeding Kansas was fought for the right to choose the future of Kansas, not for the equality of blacks.

Source: “Bleeding Kansas. Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era” Nicole Etcheson

Indian Removal and the right to claim land/possess nature

During the Indian removal period from the 1830’s until the 1850’s it is clear that the United States Government claimed that white Americans had claim to the land that were previously inhabited by Native Americans. Americans at this time had very much the same idea about claim to land as the European explorers did when they “discovered” the new world. They felt that anywhere they planted their flag was theirs regardless of the indigenous peoples living there. The US government was no different, the Indians living in the region stretching from the Ohio River valley down to the Deep South were living on US soil, and therefore the Indians had no claim to the land and could be moved to a place where they could claim the land. I.e. Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, etc. These lands that were given to the Indians would later be made smaller or completely done away with to make room for westward expansion.

The question of whether or not nature can be possessed is a complicated one. Nature cannot be possessed by man, it can only be occupied. To possess nature would be to say that people would own everything on their land, but how could someone possess a bird that doesn’t stay in one place or the water that runs in a river on the land. Native Americans seemed to embrace this concept, the did not believe that they owned the land, they were a part of it. The Indian removal was the US wanting to occupy more land and moving the Indians to new lands in the west that they could occupy.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!