Welcome to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library blog! As the special collections and archives library at the University of Kansas, Spencer is home to remarkable and diverse collections of rare and unique items. Explore the blog to learn about the work we do and the materials we collect.
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While sometimes incorrectly touted as the “Mexican Halloween,” Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is much more than that. Like many modern-day holidays, Día de Muertos looks very different today than it did at the beginning.
Origins
The origins of Día de Muertos can be traced back thousands of years to traditions of the Aztecs and other Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. For the Aztecs, death was not the end, but the beginning of their journey to Mictlan, the underworld governed by Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacíhuatl. Many of the events honoring the dead included the placing of food on altars and the burning of incense. With the arrival of the Spanish to Latin America, these events were moved to coincide with the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day at the beginning of November. However, Indigenous beliefs remained and led to a syncretic tradition that honored the cyclical nature of life and death seen in pre-Hispanic and Catholic traditions.
The Aztec god of death Mictlantecuhtli and god of life Quetzalcoatl in Spencer’s facsimile copy (page 56) of the Códice Borgia, a pre-Columbian manuscript, 1993. Call Number: D3918. Click image to enlarge.
In the early 1900s, four hundred years after the Spanish conquest of Latin America and about a hundred years after Mexico’s Independence from Spain, the Mexican government began to encourage the celebration of Día de Muertos in an effort to unite the Mexican people during a time of great political turmoil.
The calavera imagery often associated with Día de Muertos is in large part because of Jose Guadalupe Posada’s calaveras. Posada began to make satirical prints using this calavera imagery to poke fun at society and politicians, as was the case with his famous La Catrina. These depictions of calaveras were soon adopted by those participating in Día de Muertos, with it becoming a symbol of the celebration.
The front side of Posada’s La Calavera Oaxaqueña, a single sheet broadside featuring a calavera caricature dressed as a charro, 1910. Call Number: Q154.
Día de Muertos in the United States
As Mexican immigrants made their way to the United States, so did their customs and traditions. Traced back to the 1880s, Mexican Americans in the Southwest maintained the religious tradition of visiting their past one’s gravesites. However, this did not include the Indigenous practices of setting up ofrendas or burning copal incense. Instead, many of these communities engaged in “folk Catholic” traditions that tended to be more solemn to honor All Saints’ Day and Souls’ Day, rather than the vibrant and celebratory Día de Muertos of today.
However, during the 1970s the Chicano Movement embraced the traditions of Día de Muertos celebrations as a way to connect to their Mexican identity and Indigenous roots. Starting in California, these early Día de Muertos events were seen as a way for Chicano artists to publicize their art and celebrate Latino culture. In 1972, a Chicano activist group from East Los Angeles called Self Help Graphics & Arts organized what is considered the first Día de Muertos event in the country. This included a small procession to a nearby cemetery, calaveras, and ofrendas. Since then, Día de Muertos events in the United States have transformed the holiday and differed from traditional Mexican and Indigenous traditions, with politically themed altars, posters, danzas, lowriders, calavera face painting, and fashion shows. This evolution of the holiday was so impactful that it’s also influenced Mexico’s Día de Muertos celebrations.
A photo of a mural showing examples of Chicano iconography, taken by Manuel Barrera and published in La Raza, a Chicano activist newspaper and magazine in East Los Angeles, 1967. Call number: RH WL G501. Click image to enlarge.
Día de Muertos in the Midwest and Kansas
As Día de Muertos gained more popularity, Mexican American communities across the country also began to adopt the holiday, including the Midwest. For example, Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art began celebrating Día de Muertos in 1986. In Kansas City, several Latino service organizations have celebrated the holiday by hosting events for the community, including the Guadalupe Centers and Mattie Rhodes Center, which has hosted a Día de Muertos celebration since 1998.
A poster from the 2015 Día de los Muertos art exhibit and street festival organized by Kansas City’s Mattie Rhodes Center. Call Number: R97. Click image to enlarge.
In Lawrence, the University of Kansas’s Museum of Anthropology, now part of the university’s Biodiversity Institute, hosted a Día de Muertos exhibit in 1994 and several events while it remained open. Similarly, KU’s Latin American Student Union has also hosted many Día de Muertos celebrations throughout the years and continues to do so to this day.
A flyer from the 1994 Los Dias de Los Muertos exhibit at KU’s Museum of Anthropology. University Archives. Call Number: RG 33/18, Box “Grants, exhibits, loans, 1982-2000”: Museum of Natural History Records: Museum of Anthropology. Click image to enlarge.
A first part of a 2001 article in the University Daily Kansan highlighting Día de Muertos and the Museum of Anthropology’s exhibit. You can read the full article online through the Libraries’ digital collection of KU student newspapers. Call Number: UA Ser 69/2/1. Click image to enlarge.
Students participating in a Día de los Muertos activity on Wescoe Beach, 2001. The event was hosted by KU’s Hispanic American Leadership Organization (now known as LASU). University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 67/593/UP 2001 Prints: Student Organizations: HALO. Click image to enlarge.
Outside of campus, Somos Lawrence, a nonprofit organization focused on serving the non-English speakers of Lawrence, has hosted a Día de Muertos event the last couple of years, and will be doing so again this November 1st.
Just as Latino communities in the United States continue to grow and diversify, Día de Muertos celebrations will continue to evolve. In recent years, one might’ve noticed an increased commodification of Día de Muertos decorations and events, something that many in Mexican American and Latino communities fear could lead to gentrification of the holiday. However, with changes to the holiday, there has also been an effort to incorporate elements from similar celebrations in Central America to Día de Muertos celebrations, especially as a way to be inclusive of more recent immigrants from countries in that region.
So, if you go to a Día de Muertos celebration this November 1st, I invite you to think about the history and traditions this holiday holds as you eat some pan the muerto and enjoy the community ofrendas!
Rebekah Ramos Curator of Latina/o Collections
Sources
Day of the Dead Guide [PDF]. National Museum of Mexican Art, 2020. Accessed 26 October 2026.
“Day of the Dead.”Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Accessed 28 October 2026.
Marchi, Regina M. Day of the Dead in the USA, Second Edition: The Migration and Transformation of a Cultural Phenomenon, Rutgers University Press, 2022. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2v55jxd.10. Accessed 28 October 2026.
For 25 years, Sam Adams was an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas. That followed a career during which he worked as a reporter or editor at half a dozen newspapers, most notably the St. Petersburg Times.
Adams died in 2019 at the age of 93. In 2025, his daughter, Carol Adams Smith, donated his personal papers to KU’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
Ken Stephens, a retired journalist and member of the Board of Advocates for KU Libraries, has since sifted through Adams’ papers and other sources for this report.
In June 1964, Newsweek wrote that “the race beat” was “the most dangerous domestic assignment in U.S. journalism.”
Among a handful of reporters, Newsweek’s story cited Sam Adams of the St. Petersburg Times. As a black reporter covering the civil rights struggle for a white-owned southern newspaper, Adams was exceptionally rare, the magazine noted.[i]
By the time of Newsweek’s 1964 report, Adams, at 38, had already faced the hostility of southern police officers and white crowds while covering racial unrest in Birmingham, Ala., Albany, Ga., and Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Fla.
For Adams, it began on Feb. 18, 1956, when the Atlanta Daily World sent him to Columbus, Ga., to cover the slaying of Dr. Thomas H. Brewer, a physician and president of the local NAACP. “It was a harbinger of my career, trials and triumphs covering the struggle, the violence and killings that characterized the civil rights years,” Adams wrote in a speech prepared for delivery at Emory University on Nov. 8, 1997.[ii]
Working for the St. Petersburg Times, Adams covered Gov. George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door in a failed attempt to block integration of the University of Alabama in June 1963. He also reported on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.
Then, in October 1964, not quite four months after the Civil Rights Act became law, The St. Petersburg Times sent Adams and his wife, Elenora, on a 15-day, 4,300-mile driving tour across 12 southern states to see if the new law had changed anything in the South. They were to seemingly be just two middle-class black tourists.[iii]
“We were to forget, if we could, our color,” Adams wrote. “We were to report what happened to us, but to precipitate no trouble.”
Concerned friends had suggested that Adams shouldn’t embark on the trip without something to protect the two, and they offered to loan him a gun. Adams turned them down. A white friend had convinced Elenora to accept a tear gas pistol, but Sam vetoed that too.
“I have lived with fear so long I am hardly aware it’s there,” Adams wrote in the conclusion to his seven-part series.
They left their two young children, Carol, then 14, and Sam Jr., then 4, in the care of a young woman from Adams’ hometown who was staying with them while attending junior college.[iv]
Carol Adams Smith said she didn’t recall her parents telling them much about the planned trip.
“I think it was vaguely expressed to, to me, and so I don’t think at that time that I understood the seriousness of the journey that they were about to embark on,” she said.
The couple found that in many places discrimination remained unrepentant and undisguised, as when, just 50 miles into their journey, they were turned away at Hillsborough River State Park. “It’s my understanding I’m not to admit colored. I’m sorry,” the park attendant said.
Map of the 1964 “Highways to Hope” trip. From the Personal Papers of Samuel L. Adams, University Archives. Call # to be assigned (collection awaiting processing).
At a gas station in Belleview, Fla., restrooms were still designated Ladies, Gentlemen and Colored. In other places, they were told that the restrooms were out of order or locked and the key was missing. In one place they were told simply that the restrooms were “not for y’all.”
At two motels in Waterboro, S.C., they were refused a room because they were only two people and the only room available was for bigger families. Sam offered to pay the family rate, but the Adamses were sent on down the highway.
At a restaurant in Hinesville, Ga., they were met at the door by a waitress who announced “we’re closing.” It was the middle of the afternoon, and the restaurant did not close. A restaurant in St. George, S.C., served them breakfast, but at twice the cost to white customers. At a truck stop in Liberty County, Ga., they were not seated in the large restaurant but taken to an area at the rear of the building near the colored restrooms.
However, they found other places where they were welcomed, enough such places to give the title “Highways to Hope” to Adams’ 7-part series in TheSt. Petersburg Times.
They were given a room at the Ware Hotel in Waycross, Ga., Adams’ hometown, “without question.” Some white guests looked on curiously, but the black maids and porters looked on with pride.
Five years earlier, at a gas station in Jackson, Ga., Sam, Elenora and Carol, then 9, had been chased off by an attendant with a handgun because Carol had walked into the ladies restroom instead of the colored restroom.
“I remember seeing that gun pointing at my dad and him actually coming to escort me back to the car after going into that restroom,” Carol said. “But I don’t know whether or not I actually understood the intensity of that situation, being at the age that I was at that time. But I remember my parents saying that I was crying and scared.”
Sam and Elenora returned to the gas station on their 1964 tour and were treated with respect by a different attendant and allowed to use the restrooms.
In Danville, Va., Elenora froze when they walked into honky tonk full of white beer drinkers listening to hillbilly songs on the juke box. Just a year earlier, she had been on a bus headed to the March on Washington, when a police officer stepped aboard and warned that they were not to sing any Freedom Songs while passing through Danville.
In the honky tonk in 1964, they seated themselves at the only empty table, ordered coffee and were pleasantly surprised when a burly shuffleboard player leaned over to politely ask if he could rest his beer glass on their table while he took his turn.
In Huntington, W.Va., they were refused service at a small restaurant, aptly named the White Pantry. “Sorry, no colored,” a man in chef’s whites said. “We don’t serve colored.”
In Cumberland, Ky., they were denied a hotel room by a clerk employing one of the ruses used to try to get around the law: “This here is a club.”
But in Andrews, Tenn., they received a “warm and friendly welcome” at a small restaurant and a Western Auto store where they stopped to buy batteries for their radio.
In Mobile, Ala., Elenora spotted a message in a hotel clerk’s area that said, in part: “Every penny of Negro trade forced on this establishment will be donated to the White Citizens Council. If you want Negroes in the next door flat, vote Democrat.”
In Monroe, La., a hotel clerk found their reservation but turned them away because “we didn’t know you was colored when we took it.” The clerk insisted they go elsewhere “for your safety and mine.”
In Clarksdale, Miss., when they stopped at a pharmacy owned by a black doctor and his wife, a police officer repeatedly drove past, peering into the store. The doctor’s wife assured them there was nothing to fear during daylight but rattled off a list of don’ts for when the sun went down. “They do their dirt at night,” she said.
They registered at a nearby Holiday Inn but were frightened when it became clear they were being watched closely. At Elenora’s insistence, they left the hotel and accepted an offer from the doctor’s wife to spend the night at her home. The next day, they were followed well out of town by a police officer.
Carol Adams Smith said that after her parents returned home, they shared “a little bit” about their journey. “But I still am not sure how much that registered for me in terms of the danger,” she said. “I don’t think I really explored that until I was a little older and thought. ‘Oh my gosh, we could have lost our parents.’ This was a very serious journey.”
Adams’ Highways to Hope stories were reprinted by other papers from Miami to New York to Denver and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. A year later, Adams, along with a fellow reporter, was again nominated for a Pulitzer for a series on fraud and financial irregularities in student loans at what was then Gibbs Junior College in St. Petersburg.
Adams also wrote a series of stories on working and living conditions for migrant farm workers in Florida. That series won the Green Eyeshades Award from a regional branch of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Adams left daily newspapers in 1969. He would teach or consult at three universities. He served as director of the minorities division and assistant director of communications at the Democratic National Committee at the time of the Watergate break-in. His earlier reporting on hunger in the South led to an invitation to serve as a consultant to a congressional committee whose work eventually led to food stamp legislation.
As a teacher, his passion was to attract more black students to journalism, often through summer workshops for high school students, and to impress upon students the importance of writing stories that otherwise weren’t being written. That’s how he came to KU in 1973, recruited by Ed Bassett, then dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He remained at KU until retiring in 1998 and returning to live in his native Waycross, Ga., where he died.
Current KU journalism professor Pat Gaston met Adams in 1976, when she was a student at Kansas City’s Schlagle High School and attended one of his urban journalism workshops.[v]
Though she never actually took a class from Adams, he became her advisor at KU and “my mentor until he died.”
Sam Adams at KU, undated (late 1970s, early 1980s). University Archives. Call #: RG 41/0 Photos: Adams, Samuel
It was in the summer workshop that she learned of Highways to Hope. “As a youngster, 16 or 17 years old, you’re not thinking about what that really meant,” Gaston said. “But by the time I got to be a 20-something year old and was about to graduate college, I knew what that really meant and who he and Miss Eleanor, his wife, were, and why that was so important that they did that in the ‘60s.”
She has a picture of her, Adams and a group of workshop students in her office, and sometimes she will show it to her students and tell them about Adams. With the Trump administration’s rollback on diversity, equity and inclusion, she said that today Adams would never be hired for the role that brought him to KU, growing the number of students of color in journalism.
“I don’t know everybody out there in the business,” Gaston said, “but there’s a lot of us out there who knew him, who were mentored by him, who were encouraged by him. I don’t think we have any idea how many of us are out there, and I’m talking about black and brown. I’m not just talking about black students. I’m talking about all kinds of colors. So it’s hard to know, but he made some inroads. And he was the man for the time. He really was. Really was.”
Carol Adams Smith, who obtained a master’s degree in social work from KU, said Adams was like a father to many of his former students, including Mark McCormick, a journalist and executive director of the Kansas Black Leadership Council, who called Adams “Daddy Sam.”
“I consulted with Pat and Mark,” Adams Smith said, “and they helped me come to some final decision that (Spencer Research Library) is where the paperwork needed to (be); this is where his legacy needed to be.”
The Adams papers at Spencer include a couple of scrapbooks prepared by the St. Petersburg Times for national and regional reporting contests, including the Pulitzer Prize, several award plaques and a letter of congratulations from President Bill Clinton when Adams received the National Association of Black Journalists’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
There also are illuminating biographical insights from a speech Adams gave in 1997, an essay he called “Random Notes on My Teaching Philosophy,” chapters from books in which he was a subject and three examples of racist hate mail he received in 1965.
Kenneth Stephens KU alumnus, j’75, and immediate past chair of the KU Libraries Board of Advocates
Ken Stephens discusses Sam Adams among items from his papers at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library
[ii] Draft speech, Samuel L. Adams, Univ. of Kansas, Prepared for Delivery Nov. 8, 1997, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. Personal Papers of Samuel L. Adams, call # yet to be assigned. Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
[iii] All details of the Adams’s 1964 driving tour across the South are drawn from “Highways to Hope,” a seven-part series written by Adams and published by the St. Petersburg Times Nov. 8-14, 1964. Found in the Personal Papers of Samuel L. Adams, call # yet to be assigned. Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Also available in the on-line archives of the Tampa Bay Times, as the St. Petersburg Times is now known, and on Newspapers.com.
[iv] Carol Adams Smith, interviewed by Ken Stephens Oct. 12, 2026.
[v] Pat Gaston, interviewed by Ken Stephens July 27, 2026.
This coming Tuesday, October 6th, will see the return of Day on the Hill, KU’s storied music festival that was sponsored by Student Union Activities (SUA) from 1989 to 2007. With the newly digitized University Daily Kansas (UDK) and some artifacts and photos from University Archives, we can piece together a history of “one of the best college music festivals in the nation,” as the manager of the band Soul Coughing described Day on the Hill in 1998.
Starting in 1978, many outdoor day-long music events in spring and summer were held at KU near Allen Fieldhouse or on Campanile Hill under various names such as Day on the Green, Day on the Green Hill, Wheatstock (in homage to Woodstock), Summer on the Hill, and Jayhawk Jamboree. These events featured local or regional bands, which kept costs low and made the event free for both students and locals. By the 1980s, the Jayhawk Jamboree’s title had officially changed to its nickname to Jayhawk Jam, but it was cancelled in 1987 and 1988 because SUA did not have enough money to host it.
A poster for Wheatstock, a precursor to KU’s Day on the Hill, 1979. University Archives Records, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23. Click image to enlarge.
In 1989, SUA decided to use the budget it had left over at the end of the year and teamed up with the Student Senate, the Association of University Residence Halls, and radio station KJHK to host a new all-day concert event called Day on the Hill. It was part of the Student Senate’s Celebrate Diversity program and it included cultural performances, local bands, Love Tractor from Athens, Georgia, and Too Much Joy from New York. Forty-seven local bands had sent in cassette tapes of their music to be considered by a committee from SUA and KJHK. Students were hired to work the event for $20, and 1,500 people attended.
The next year, 3,000 people attended to watch more local bands, Buffalo Tom, and Toad the Wet Sprocket with reportedly beautiful weather and buckets of fried chicken. In 1991, complaints about the lack of diversity and the selection process for local bands resulted in a bigger committee and the inclusion of hip-hop groups in the lineup for the first time.
Left: A University Daily Kansan ad for the first Day on the Hill, April 1989. Right: A UDK photo from the 1991 Day on the Hill concert. University Archives. Call Number: UA Ser 69/2/1. Click images to enlarge.
The year 1992 changed everything for Day on the Hill. In February, SUA offered the little-known band Pearl Jam $3,000 to be the headliner for the event that year on May 2nd. Their album Ten had been released the summer before, but it wasn’t until their second single “Even Flow” was released in March 1992 that the band’s popularity and album sales began to rise quickly.
The promotional poster for the 1992 Day on the Hill concert. University Archives Records, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23. Click image to enlarge.
When word got out that Pearl Jam was playing a free outdoor concert at KU, high school and college students from around the region drove to Lawrence to join KU students and locals at the show. Crowd estimates range from 18,000 to 30,000; the latter number would have been Pearl Jam’s biggest show to date. A mosh pit formed in the crowd, and during an extended version of the song “Porch” singer Eddie Vedder climbed up the scaffolding of the stage, swung across the rafters, hung upside down while grabbing the mike, and finished singing the song while sitting on top of the roof, a stunt Vedder would repeat many times at outdoor shows.
Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder swinging across the rafters at the 1992 Day on the Hill concert. Dyche Hall is visible in the background on the left. Photo by Danny Beck, courtesy of the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology website. Click image to enlarge.
Pearl Jam’s appearance at KU became a legendary story for those lucky enough to have attended. It also, in many ways, set students’ expectations very high when it came to future Day on the Hill shows. As voiced in the UDK later in the 1990s, many students asked why SUA could not bring in bigger bands or questioned SUA’s choices when they were usually working with a budget of $20,000 to $30,000. Members of SUA had to repeatedly explain that the Pearl Jam show had been a great stroke of luck. The 1992 concert remained Day on the Hill’s highest attendance for its entire run.
In 1993, SUA decided to host a battle of the bands to choose local performers for Day on the Hill, adding another hurdle after cassette tape submissions. The concert was called the Farmers’ Ball, and it continued throughout the 1990s. Heavy rain led to a very muddy show with headliners the Gin Blossoms and Reverend Horton Heat in 1993, and the mud came again in 1994 with Urge Overkill.
Posters from the 1993 (left) and 1994 (right) Day on the Hill shows. University Archives Records, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23. Click images to enlarge.
University Daily Kansan coverage of the 1994 Day on the Hill concert. University Archives. Call Number: UA Ser 69/2/1. Click image to enlarge.
Leading up the 1995 show, someone started a hoax that the band Phish was going to be the headliner and posted fake flyers around campus, leading to disappointment when Matthew Sweet was announced as the real headliner. Also that year, a few students decided to load a couch into a truck and bring it to the hill to sit on during the event. For many years later, students brought couches and other furniture, hauling them up the hill to enjoy a comfortable view.
Students enjoying Day on the Hill from a comfy couch, 1990s. University Archives Photographs, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23 1990s Prints. Click image to enlarge.
The late ’90s brought new changes including games and carnival-like activities, and the show ended at 6pm rather than at 9pm or later. Despite its budget struggles, SUA was able to book Urge Overkill, They Might Be Giants, Soul Coughing, the Urge, and HUM.
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Scenes from Day on the Hill concerts, 1990s. University Archives Photographs, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Click on images to enlarge.
The promotional poster for the 1997 Day on the Hill concert. University Archives Records, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23. Click image to enlarge.
Day on the Hill badges, 1997. University Archives Records, Student Activities: Student Union Activities. Call Number: RG 71/23. Click image to enlarge.
In 2002, SUA decided to return to Day on the Hill’s roots as an event for local bands only. The show was also rescheduled a week later because of rain and moved to a parking lot near the football stadium. The low turnout that year prompted SUA to cancel Day on the Hill for the next three years.
With a new student activity fee in 2006, Day on the Hill returned with headliners Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Spoon. In 2007, it was moved to the Leid Center’s lawn with G. Love & Special Sauce and the Faint. In the UDK, there are no reports about that last show or why SUA stopped it entirely.
Enjoy these lineups (compiled from the UDK) and links to some videos on YouTube. Many thanks to those who digitized their recordings and preserved these glimpses of what was possible on KU’s campus when determined, resourceful students were able to pull off ground-breaking, free shows that celebrated the very important role that music plays in young people’s lives.
1989: Pathetic Excuse, The Mahoots, The Works, The Moving Van Goghs, Love Tractor, Too Much Joy
1990: The Witch Doctors,2-Mile Death Plunge, Chris Beneke, Joe Worker, The Fluid, Sin City Disciples, Buffalo Tom, DJ Sir Light, Toad the Wet Sprocket
1991: Now See Hear, Two Guitars and a Short Guy, Zoom, Mutt Finicky, Az-One, DOPE (Disciples of Peace and Equality), Paris
In honor of the celebrations surrounding the 250th birthday of the United States this week, we’re taking a look back at how KU commemorated the bicentennial fifty years ago.
A full-page advertisement in the University Daily-Kansan for the Sunflower Spectacular bicentennial fireworks show, July 1, 1976. University Archives. Call Number: UA Ser 69/2/1. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
A year of intensive planning, special projects, and varied events at the university culminated in the Sunflower Spectacular fireworks show at Memorial Stadium on July 4, 1976. The show “featured the cooperation of the University Alumni Association with Vince Bilotta as coordinator, the Summer Band Camp under the direction of Robert Foster, and the Lawrence Jaycees with their annual sponsorship of the fireworks display.” Prior to the show were afternoon and evening performances of patriotic music at the Memorial Campanile and Carillon, part of a bicentennial summer concert series. Lawrencians also participated in a broad array of off-campus festivities that weekend, concluding the Douglas County Bicentennial Commission’s similarly busy and productive year.
People at Memorial Stadium for the Sunflower Spectacular show, July 4, 1976. Photo by George Millener for the Lawrence Journal-World. Lawrence Journal-World Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH LJW (negatives). Click image to enlarge.
Fireworks during the Sunflower Spectacular show, July 4, 1976. In the first two images, note the spectators on the hill near the Campanile. Photos by George Millener for the Lawrence Journal-World. Lawrence Journal-World Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH LJW (negatives). Click images to enlarge.
A description of the fireworks show and preceding musical program in the Lawrence Journal-World, July 5, 1976. Article courtesy of the Google News Archive. Click image to enlarge.
A questionnaire attached to the final report of KU’s seventeen-member Bicentennial Committee stated that 1,335 individuals had been “actually involved and participating” in its various commemorative efforts. The Committee also estimated that more than 70,500 people had attended KU’s bicentennial events (“based on estimates where numbers could be determined”). “The philosophy of the University Bicentennial Committee,” noted the document, “was reflected in the nature of the projects and events that were identified and sponsored. The emphasis was upon activities that coordinated closely with the major missions of the University in its academic programs, its research projects, and its responsibility of service to the people of the state of Kansas.”
Reflecting back on the academic year, the editors of the 1976 Jayhawker yearbook wrote (somewhat hyperbolically):
If nothing else, the student of ’76 always will remember this year for the pomp and sure-coin-stance of the American Revolution Bicentennial. Attending an official Bicentennial university, living in an official Bicentennial community, taking a course in the history of the American Revolution from W. Stitt Robinson, professor of history and chairman of the KU Bicentennial Committee, celebrating homecoming with the theme of Jayhawk Rebellion, going to one of the five Humanities Series lectures with a Bicentennial theme, taking in a Saturday afternoon of Bicentennial music at Off-the-Wall-Hall, watching the official Bicentennial flag flutter in the Bicentennial breeze, seeing musical presentations, theater productions and museum exhibits with a Bicentennial flavor, applauding a Bicentennial Rock Chalk Revue, seeing the KU Symphonic Band off for a Bicentennial tour and dancing to Bicentennial banjos in a Bicentennial street dance during a Bicentennial Festival of the Arts were some of the things the Bicentennial student did.
Figure 1: Lela Duncan Cardozo’s KU letter sweater. Call number RG 66/20.
From Student Senate buttons and sports memorabilia to a vial of uranium connected to the Manhattan Project, the unexpected breadth of objects preserved by the University Archives reveals lesser-known aspects of the University of Kansas’s history. The University Archives is the official repository for all materials related to the University of Kansas. Its holdings include official records, publications, correspondence, research papers, and more. However, the University Archives contains more than just documents; it has a robust Artifact Collection that uses objects to tell the KU story.
I began my Graduate Assistant position with Conservation Services in August 2025, and I quickly became familiar with the Artifact Collection and its unique challenges. The University Archives has been collecting objects for decades, but documentation and housing efforts have been largely inconsistent. When I began this project, there was no item-level inventory of the collection, and many objects were stacked precariously in mismatched or overfilled boxes (See Figure 2). Inconsistent storage practices increase the risk of physical damage, and a lack of intellectual control over the collection makes items difficult to access.
Figure 2: Inconsistent storage practices highlighted a need to standardize future storage solutions.
This project consisted of several key phases. First, I conducted a full item-level inventory of the Artifact Collection to gain a complete understanding of its contents. For each object, I assigned a unique sequential Artifact ID number (e.g. ARFT.1, ARFT.2, etc.) and recorded any label information from the exterior of the box, including associated Record Group numbers. I then created a brief title and a full description noting color, material type, and any identifiable features on the object, along with any dates indicated on the item or its housing. I documented the object’s exact measurements in centimeters, assessed and recorded its condition, and noted its current location, housing method, and any outstanding questions or comments.
Following the written documentation, I photographed each object using a temporary photo setup consisting of a white paper background and a light-diffusing shade made from corrugated plastic. I used my iPhone to take the photographs, which were intended to provide visual documentation of the objects rather than high-quality, exhibit-ready images. Their purpose was to capture essential physical details that cannot be conveyed through text alone. In each image, I included a small dry-erase board displaying the Artifact ID number in each image to ensure consistent identification (See Figure 3).
Figure 3: A sample photo from the project inventory, showing the plaster mask of Chancellor Franklin Murphy, 1957. Call number: RG 22/12.
Finally, I attached a small, hand-cut white paper tag to each object using simple white thread and labeled it with its corresponding Artifact ID number. Instead of ordering object tags from an archival supply company, I created the tags in-house using scrap paper to conserve resources. I inventoried as many objects as possible every day, and I reserved the final half-hour of my shift to upload photos, downloading them to a shared networked drive and organizing them into folders based on the objects’ current room locations. This consistent workflow not only ensured thorough documentation but also allows future users to track the overall timeline and progress of the inventory for similar projects.
After the inventory phase, I developed a comprehensive rehousing plan for the University Archives’ Artifact Collection that focused on standardizing storage materials in order to improve the long-term safety and accessibility of the collection. Developing this rehousing plan required balancing preventive conservation best practices, archival theory, spatial limitations, and institutional realities. Organizing by size improves efficiency and reduces handling risks, while material-based grouping mitigates chemical and environmental threats. On the other hand, contextual organization preserves provenance and research value, and standardized documentation ensures continued intellectual control. Balancing all of these concepts, the rehousing plan details first steps and priorities, lists existing storage solutions to follow, and models potential storage solutions for objects whose current housings need improvement. It also provides a list of standard box sizes so that storage solutions stay consistent moving forward. Designed with flexibility in mind, the plan is meant to support future growth, ensuring the collection can evolve without compromising curatorial integrity. Following this plan, I have now begun rehousing objects.
While rehousing Record Group 0/25: Jayhawks, I encountered an oversized box filled with plastic objects that were visibly deteriorating (see Figure 4). Several items exhibited yellowing and surface changes that suggested they were being affected by surrounding materials. In response, I removed all non-plastic objects from the box and rehoused them separately. The remaining plastics, particularly those showing signs of degradation, were wrapped individually in tissue and placed in a standard banker’s box designed to function as a containment unit rather than a highly customized enclosure. Photographs of each object were affixed to the lid, and labeled tags were tied to the exterior of each wrapped item to improve retrievability (see Figure 5). Because these objects possess relatively low research value, constructing individualized custom enclosures was not an efficient use of limited resources. Instead, I prioritized risk mitigation and containment. This solution reflects a central methodological principle of this project: rehousing does not aim for perfection, but for measurable improvement and increased standardization.
Every storage decision reflects institutional realities, professional standards, and long-term stewardship commitments. By integrating collections management strategies with conservation principles, this project provides a flexible and sustainable framework for not only the continued care of the Artifact Collection but an example for any archive drawing on museological best practices to deal with 3D objects.
While I was able to complete an item-level inventory of the Artifact Collection, the rehousing stage of the project will likely extend beyond my time at KU. As a result, the rehousing plan developed here will serve as a guide for future staff, supporting consistent and standardized decision-making. In addition, I have outlined detailed workflows for the continued care of the collection. This project would not have been possible without the collaboration of the University Archives, Conservation Services, and Spencer’s Archival Processing Team.
A very special thanks to Letha Johnson for warmly welcoming me into the University Archives and for placing her trust in me as I engaged critically with the Artifact Collection. Her trust and collaboration were essential to the success of this project.
Brenna Hobbs M.A. Museum Studies 2026 Graduate Assistant in Conservation Services
