I wrote three books about Kansas in three years. During my travels, I heard that James Bond is buried in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Pittsburg. I couldn’t find 007. Instead, I found multiple languages carved on tombstones and the Mishmash family graves. A mish-mash is a jumble of objects. It’s also a Bulgarian dish akin to a breakfast skillet.
That cemetery in the state’s Little Balkans is a statewide metaphor. Far from flat, bland and boring, the state has stood at the forefront of controversy since its inception. The Sunflower State’s goulash of geography extends from the Ozark Plateau in the southeast to the Arikaree Breaks in the northwest. The hope of a better life and the state’s Free State reputation attracted many immigrants, who provided a cornucopia of culture and cuisine.
In the 1870s, Kansas attracted Exodusters, formerly enslaved people fleeing segregation. However, Kansas still allowed some segregation. Because of this, Kansas became a leader in civil rights cases. The Webb vs. District No. 90 dispute began when the Merriam school board forbade black students to attend a new grade school. Instead, they were shunted to the decrepit Madam C.J. Walker School.
Helen Swan explained the situation to her white employer, Esther Brown. Swan, Brown, Alfonso and Mary Webb and others joined the NAACP. With NAACP support, they hired teachers for their children and filed a lawsuit. In response, Brown’s father-in-law fired her husband, and the FBI investigated her.
Eventually, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in their favor, allowing the children to start school in September 1949. Five years later, Brown assisted with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, overturning educational segregation nationwide.
Not all immigrants arrived voluntarily. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly pushed many Indigenous nations out of Indiana into present-day Kansas. (Ironically, “Indiana” means “Land of Indians.”) Leavenworth’s streets bear the exiled nations’ names.
The government promised housing for the Potawatomi Nation’s Mission Band at the end of their 660-mile Trail of Death. Instead, only desolation greeted them near present-day Osawatomie in November 1837. The Prairie Band invited them to their home at St. Mary’s Mission near present-day Centerville. St. Rose Philippine Duchesne ministered at the mission, the only Catholic saint to live in Kansas.
However, immigration was catastrophic for Indigenous nations already in the state. Before the Civil War, they suffered from displaced Eastern Indigenous nations moving past the “Permanent Indian Frontier.” Life worsened after the war. The Homestead and Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 assigned Indigenous land to railroads and settlers. War ensued.
Fresh from Civil War glory, Winfield Scott Hancock’s heavy-handed tactics failed, forcing him to meet Indigenous leaders at Medicine Lodge Creek in 1867. The resulting treaties brought no peace. Congress was too busy impeaching President Andrew Johnson in 1868 to appropriate the promised peacekeeping payments. Therefore, raiding resumed. Gen. Philip Sheridan repeated the total war tactics he had applied in Civil War Virginia. Slaughtering bison proved an effective way to force Indigenous peoples onto reservations.
Medicine Lodge also housed two of the state’s most intriguing characters, Carry Nation and Sockless Jerry Simpson. Originally Carrie Nation, she eventually changed her name to Carry in order to “Carry A. Nation to Prohibition.” She started her saloon-smashing career in 1900 while living in Medicine Lodge. She threw rocks at saloons in nearby Kiowa. The trademark hatchet came later in Wichita.
Ten years earlier, Simpson ran for Congress as a Populist during a drought and national economic crisis. His opponent, Wichita’s James Reed Hallowell, wore silk stockings. Hallowell derided Simpson for his socklessness. Simpson accepted the “Sockless Jerry” title and won the election.
Kansas stepped up again during World War II. When Army Air Corps General Henry “Hap” Arnold demanded an impossible bomber production schedule, Kansas delivered. The state became a series of pilot training airfields and aircraft factories. Wichita was already the Air Capital of the World, but its World War II performance cemented the title.
John James Ingalls devised a better state motto, “Ad Astra per Aspera,” than he perhaps realized. Kansas has reached toward the stars through plenty of “aspera,” from war to locust plagues. We own a resilient heritage. The stars await.
Roxie Yonkey of Goodland is the author of “100 Things to Do in Kansas Before You Die,” “Secret Kansas” and “Historic Kansas Roadsides,” all published by Reedy Press. Follow her at roxieontheroad.com.
