The journey is the story. The story is the contributions African Americans have made to the history of Kansas. The Kansas African-American History Trail is being set up to tell that story across the state.
“This is not just African-American history, this is Kansas history,” says Jo Bogan, director of the project that is underway thanks in part to a $134,470 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The trail is a partnership that will link sites across the state that are important part of African American contributions to Kansas.
Sites that will be included in the trail include:
•Calvary Baptist Church, Wichita, home of the Kansas African-American Museum.
The Negro League Baseball Museum, Kansas City.
•John Brown Museum, Osawatomie.
•Monroe School, site of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. It is a national park site.
•Junction City, a Buffalo Soldiers Memorial.
•Leavenworth, Richard Allen Museum and Buffalo Soldiers Monument. Allen was a former Buffalo Solider.
•Baxter Springs Heritage Center, the area was an early post-Civil War settlement for African Americans
•Lawrence, memorial for poet Langston Hughes who was raised there.
•Fort Scott, home of Gordon Parks, photographer, poet, filmmaker, writer.
•Minneapolis, museum honoring botanist George Washington Carver who attended high school there.
•Nicodemus, Kansas’ only all African-American city. It also is one of the oldest surviving African-American towns in the west.
“The trail is for the purpose of letting citizens become aware of African-American contributions to Kansas as it was becoming a state,” Bogan said.
Some of the sites have a dual interests. “There may be a story about a person, but there also may be a story about Buffalo Soldiers, or the Underground Railroad. The stories are all intertwined,” said Bogan.
For instance, there is an African-American township that was flooded by Clinton Lake near Lawrence.
Bogan has been working with the Kansas Department of Transportation to set up signage for the trail. She also envisions developing educational programs and conferences to draw in other sites, such as in Oklahoma, Missouri and other states bordering Kansas.
Local people know stories, but may not know the stories across the state. The Trail, set to launch in September, will link it all.