Jump to Navigation

Kansas History - Autumn 1997

(Vol. 20, No. 3)

Kansas History, Summer 1997

Jay Antle, "Against Kansas's Top Dog: Coyotes, Politics, and Ecology, 1877-1970."

Read this article online

Using the 1967 debate over the use Federal hunters from the Predator and Rodent Control Division in Kansas as a jumping off point, Antle examines "the history of coyote control in Kansas as well as the attitudes of Kansans that supported attempts to destroy coyote populations." The author's evidence shows that, although the coyote was the most significant predator in the state once the Gray Wolf had been decimated, "coyote predation never impacted the Kansas livestock industry to the level of significance that rhetoric suggested." Nevertheless, many believe the wily beast threatened the very survival of the industry. The search for "an ecologically responsible" method of control and the "unlikely" coalition of environmentalist and sport hunters are two areas of exploration. Governor William H. Avery's 1966 agreement with the PARC ignited a fierce debate, threatening as it did the state's more ecologically responsible "trapper" system, first established in 1949 and administered by Kansas State University through the extension service.

Richard B. Sheridan, "'A Most Unusual Gathering': The 1913 Semi-Centennial Memorial Reunion of the Survivors of Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence."

Read this article online

Reunions, especially those involving veterans groups or others associated with the Civil War, were a common occurrence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but Lawrence's 1913 event was somewhat unique and "significant in that it memorialized a tragic event of great importance in Civil War Kansas and the United States."

William C. Quantrill's August 21, 1863, raid on Lawrence, Kansas, left an estimated two hundred men and boys dead or dying from gun shot wounds and an indelible mark on the survivors and their descendants. In this article, Sheridan, an emeritus professor at the University of Kansas, explores "the background to and execution of plans for the Semi-Centennial memorial Reunion" and shows "that in 1913 the human and material resources of lawrence were mobilized and that some two hundred of the survivors gathered to celebrate their escape and to honor the memories of the citizens who fell in the raid."

Rusty L. Monhollon, "Taking the Plunge: Race, Rights, and the Politics of Desegregation in Lawrence, Kansas, 1960."

Read this article online

Although many things changed with regard to race relations in Kansas and the nation in the wake of the landmark Brown v. Board decision, the pace of that change was often painfully slow. Monhollon examines grass-roots civil rights activism in Lawrence during the 1950s and 1960s, focusing especially on efforts of the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy to force the integration of the city's privately owned swimming pool, the Jayhawk Plunge, during the summer of 1960. For some time, the efforts were resisted by "many Lawrencians who allegedly supported the principle of equal opportunity but who placed the right of an individual to associate and interact with womever he or she wished above the civil rights of African Americans." The Plunge was closed, but Lawrence did not get an integrated pool until 1969.

William S. Worley, "The Kansas City Urban Planning Tradition: George Kessler, Henry Wright, and Herbert Hare."

Read this article online

"Urban planning history in the United States," writes University of Missouri, Kansas City, historian William S. Worley, "tends to concentrate on East Coast examples" and a very few well-known architects. As he demonstrates here, however, Kessler, Wright, and the two Hares also made significant contributions and helped "to make midwestern and southwestern cities more than a patchwork of gridiron streets." In Kansas City the work of all four is especially evident in the elaborate Park and Boulevard Plan, co-authored by George Kessler and first published in 1893. The Kessler-Wright collaboration resulted in the construction of many elements of the Kansas City system, including West Terrace Park and The Paseo. The firm of Hare and Hare designed numerous cemeteries and landscapes for private homes in the area. The father and son team also expanded its park planning efforts after 1910 and, among other things, did the landscape planning for Kansas City's premier art museum--the Nelson-Atkins