Kenneth Spencer Research Library

In honor of National Running Day on June 3^rd, we’re highlighting our collection of one of KU’s most talented and famous milers, Jim Ryun. Starting his career at Wichita East High School, where he became the first high school student to run a mile in under four minutes, Ryun continued to break records at the University of Kansas. Not only did he set a new world record while running for KU in 1966 with a 3:51.3 minute mile, but he also won a silver medal at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968. To learn more about Ryun’s extraordinary life and running career, check out “Ryun’s Run” by KU History’s Mark D. Hersey.

Ryun running at Wichita East High School, where he became the first high school student to run a mile in under four minutes. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/19 Ryun, Jim Prints: Athletics: Track and Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

A portion of an article from KU’s Alumni Magazine reporting on Ryun’s mile time that broke the world record in 1966. University Archives. Call Number: Biographical/Morgue File Jim Ryun. Click image to enlarge.

This document, created by Jay Simon, the Sports Information Director at KU in 1967, lists Ryun’s mile times that were under four minutes. University Archives. Call Number: Biographical/Morgue File Jim Ryun. Click image to enlarge.

Ryun in his KU track uniform with the Campanile in the background, circa 1967. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/19 Ryun, Jim Prints: Athletics: Track and Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Ryun signing autographs at the 1969 Kansas Relays. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/19 Ryun, Jim Prints: Athletics: Track and Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Ryun running in the Kansas Relays in 1987. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/19 Ryun, Jim Prints: Athletics: Track and Field (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Spencer Research Library Public Services

By 1969 American society was increasingly uncivil and the University of Kansas was facing a crisis. The struggle for civil rights and racial equality continued, but was joined by a radicalized white youth. They did not believe that American involvement in the Vietnam War was justifiable and had no interest in being drafted. Tension would remain high throughout the year, culminating in the so-called “Days of Rage” that included racial conflicts, student protests, bomb threats, arson, and sniper fire. This second and final part in a series about two of the most tumultuous years for the University outlines the events from May 1969 to May 1970.

May 9, 1969: Protest Cancels ROTC Review

The annual Chancellor’s ROTC Review was cancelled when 200 protesters broke down the gate into Memorial Stadium. They began by reading the names of the 33,379 servicemen and women killed in Vietnam to date and then joined together on the field and started a sit-in, chanting and waving signs against the ROTC. Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe decided the review could not be accomplished in such circumstances and wanted to avoid violence from the agitated crowd. The protest was organized by KU Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Afterward, 33 of 71 identified protestors were suspended for one semester by KU in confidential hearings. The event left Wescoe visibly drained and worried about what lay ahead; his fears would not be unfounded.

The group of protestors rallies in front of Strong Hall before their disruption
of the ROTC Review, May 1969. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1969: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Protestors during the ROTC Review at Memorial Stadium, May 9, 1969.
ROTC members stand on the track in the background. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1969: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

October 15, 1969: National Vietnam Moratorium Day

More than 3,500 KU students, faculty, and locals paraded on Memorial Drive and Jayhawk Boulevard in protest of the Vietnam War. Later, about 150 people gathered in front of Strong Hall in a silent vigil held behind rows of white crosses. The day also included four KU professors making their case against the war inside Hoch Auditorium, attended by 3,000 students. Similar rallies and gatherings were happening all over the country, pressuring President Nixon to change policy in the Vietnam War.

Protestors lined up behind white crosses on the lawn of Strong Hall on
National Vietnam Moratorium Day, October 15, 1969. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1969: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click images to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Two men silently protesting on campus,
National Vietnam Moratorium Day, October 15, 1969.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/18 1969:
Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

February 23, 1970: University Daily Kansan dumped into Potter Lake

In retaliation for the University printers’ decision to no longer print the Black Student Union’s (BSU) Harambee, the group gathered 6,000 copies of the UDK and tossed them into Potter Lake on campus. Harambee celebrated black culture and encouraged black solidarity. It ran information for a scholarship program established by BSU but also included Black Power Movement ideology, like the need for oppressed people to arm themselves to achieve freedom. The reaction from some white groups deemed the material obscene and inflammatory, leading to the printers’ decision to discontinue its service.

Black Student Union Protest, men pulling copies of the University Daily Kansan
out of Potter Pond, February 23, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1970: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

February 26, 1970: Black Student Union Protest

The BSU presented a list of demands calling for more black faculty members and students and the creation of a black studies program. The timetable for the demands was deemed unrealistic by Chancellor Chalmers, but an African Studies program would be created later in the year.

April 20, 1970: Arson Fire at Memorial Union

The culminating act in a day of mayhem and a week of civil disorder on the KU campus, a period often referred to as the “Days of Rage,” was the April 20, 1970, fire at the Kansas Union. Eventually deemed arson, the fire caused nearly a million dollars in damage and took place against the backdrop of a nation in turmoil over the Vietnam War and racial unrest in a college town considered a “hot bed” of political activism and protest.

Memorial Union fire, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/54/f 1970: Campus Buildings: Memorial Union (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Memorial Union fire, exterior damage, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/54/f 1970: Campus Buildings: Memorial Union (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Memorial Union fire, interior damage, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/54/i 1970: Campus Buildings: Memorial Union (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

May 5-8, 1970

The month of May witnessed the greatest display of campus dissent and disorder. As the end of the 1970 school year approached, KU protesters urged fellow students to go on strike. After the US invasion of Cambodia and four student deaths at Kent State, the campus was on high alert.

May 5: A coffin-bearing crowd of 500 marches against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State massacre.

May 6: ROTC Review was cancelled for the second straight year as a crowd of 1,000 rallies against the group on campus. About 200 re-grouped and damaged the Military Science Building on campus.

Military Science Building, damage from student protests, May 7, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1970: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

May 8: Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers held an Alternative Convocation attended by 12,000 and allowed students to choose between finishing the semester in classes or completing the semester early and taking part in some political activity of their choice. Antiwar activists were upset the University did not take an official stand against the war and close down. Conservative politicians, regents, and alumni thought the Chancellor caved in to student radicals.

Chancellor Chalmers with students at Memorial Stadium for the
Alternative Convocation, May 8, 1970. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1970: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Day of Alternatives, Chancellor Chalmers addressing students at Memorial Stadium, May 8, 1970.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/18 1970: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

JoJo Palko
University Archives Intern

How many freshmen can boast that their arrival on campus was covered by the national press? Though neither a star athlete nor the child of a public figure, poet Harry Kemp (1883-1960) won this distinction through his knack for self-promotion. Kemp’s unconventional arrival at KU by boxcar in January of 1906 launched him from anonymity to the front page of the New York Tribune —  “TO COLLEGE UNDER FREIGHT CAR / Student Leaves New-York with 3 cents–Working Way at University of Kansas. Another headline in the Kansas City Star proclaimed Kemp a “Tramp Poet,” and the moniker stuck (though he was known as the vagabond poet and hobo poet as well). During his six years of studies at KU, Kemp immersed himself in books, built a reputation as a poet and writer, and befriended nearby William Allen White, the newsman and “Sage of Emporia.”

And as the years passed, Kemp continued to make headlines, including as the “other man” in Upton Sinclair’s divorce and for attempting  in 1913 to “tramp” to England as a stowaway aboard a steamer, something that earned him a brief stay in a British jail and further celebrity on both sides of the pond. Of course, Kemp garnered attention for his literary output as well. He published books of verse–including The Cry of Youth (1914), Chanteys and Ballads (1920), and Don Juan’s Note-book (1929)–and a bestselling semi-fictionalized memoir, Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical Narrative (1922), in which KU appears as “Laurel University” in “Laurel, Kansas.” Kemp livened up already the already lively literary circles of Greenwich Village and was associated with the Provincetown Players, electing ultimately to settle in Cape Cod.

Youth and Old Age: Harry Kemp (middle row, second from left) with fellow members of the Scoop Club
(for news reporters) in the 1909 Jayhawker yearbook, Call #: LD 2697.J3 1909,
and in a photograph from the the 1950s, Personal Papers of Harry Kemp. Call #: PP 75, Box 3.
Click images to enlarge.

Though Louis Untermeyer had once spoken of Kemp alongside Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, by the end of his life, the Tramp Poet’s reputation had already begun to fade. Nevertheless, Kemp continued to write and elevate his eccentricities to an art.  From his shack in Provincetown, Massachusetts, he would sign his poems (and sometimes even compose them) with a seagull feather.  In honor National Poetry Month, we remember today one of the most eccentric and free-spirited poets to emerge from KU, Harry Kemp, and share three of his poems below.

Kemp, Harry. “Kansas” in Sunflowers: A Book of Kansas Poems. Willard Wattles, Editor.
Lawrence, KS:  World Company, 1914. Call #: KAC C71. Click image to enlarge.

Kemp, Harry. “The Humming Bird,” from Chanteys and Ballads, Sea-chanteys, Tramp-ballads and Other
Ballads and Poems. New York, Brentano’s [c1920]. Call #: PP 75, Box 1. Click images to enlarge.

Kemp, Harry.  “Eight Lines, For the New Year (Human Trust),” undated.
Personal Papers of Harry Kemp. Call # PP 75, Box 3. Click Image to enlarge.

For more on Harry Kemp, his poetry, and his wild life, see William Brevda’s Harry Kemp, the Last Bohemian or drop by Spencer and begin exploring his personal papers.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

Conservation Services students and staff have housed a wide variety of objects from the University Archives in the past few years. Each object presents its own challenges, but we try to keep a few things in mind: 1) It must be easy for a patron to remove the object safely from the box, 2) any paperwork that accompanies the object should be stored in a pocket in the box lid, and 3) a color image of the item should be affixed to the outside of the box to aid staff in locating the correct item without having to open every box.

Please enjoy a few of our favorite recent housings.

Left: Metal Jayhawk broken at neck, housed in original orientation with support for the broken area.
Right: Ceramic Jayhawk whiskey bottle. Call numbers: 0/25. University Archives. Click images to enlarge.

Left: Chancellor Snow’s pocket watch with winding key. Call number: 2/6/6.
Right: Professor L.L. Dyche’s compass and measuring tape. Call number: 41/0. University Archives. Click images to enlarge.

Seal of the University of Kansas. Call number: 0/30. University Archives. Click image to enlarge.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

The 1960s were an iconic time in the United States, marked by social activism and cultural conflict. Lawrence was no exception, and the University of Kansas also experienced civil unrest throughout the decade. This is the first in a two-part series about two very tumultuous years for the university. The year 1965 saw a sit-in at Chancellor Wescoe’s office in Strong Hall. While it was perhaps the most well-known of the protests that year, the demonstration was just one of many to thrust students against authority, inequality, and war. What follows is a timeline of some of the events from that year.

Group of Vietnam protestors in downtown Lawrence, February 21, 1965.
Lawrence Journal-World Photo Collection, University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG LJW 71/18 1965: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

February 24: Civil Rights Housing Picket
Approximately thirty-five members of the Civil Rights Council (CRC) staged a picket just before a speech by noted civil libertarian Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Picketers were not against Douglas but were opposed to KU’s complicity in housing discrimination. Douglas spoke to 2,000 in Hoch Auditorium on the role of international law in the nuclear age.

Justice William O. Douglas speaking to the crowd at Hoch Auditorium, February 24,1965.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/19 Douglas, William O.:
University General: Visitors (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

March 8-9: Fair Housing Sit-In and March
150 members of CRC, both black and white students, gathered in the corridor outside of Chancellor Wescoe’s office the morning of March 8th. The hope was to bring attention to the administration’s unspoken approval of discrimination in campus housing and approved organizations, like fraternities and sororities. The group came with a list of seven demands that the students wanted Wescoe to approve immediately. They included the abolishment of racially discriminatory practices of sororities and fraternities; a rule that the University Daily Kansan could no longer publish advertisements of racially discriminatory landlords and/or organizations; and the formation of a committee of students, faculty members, and administrators to resolve such grievances on campus.

Protestors came and went throughout the day, but as the doors were to be locked to the Chancellor’s suite, 110 of the participants refused to leave. Those that remained were arrested by Lawrence police and taken to county and city jails where they were charged with disturbing the peace and then released on bond. While Lawrence was not the center of the national civil rights movement, those 110 protestors arrested was the largest number besides a demonstration led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama. That night around 400 conducted a peaceful candlelight march near the Chancellor’s residence, singing “We Shall Overcome.”

The following day, the demonstrators returned with signs and stood in front of Strong Hall. Wescoe met with representatives from several groups and ultimately met the protesters’ demands. “The 1965 demonstration was perhaps the most successful civil rights protest ever in Lawrence,” said noted Lawrence historian, Rusty L. Monhollon. It did not fix all of the issues immediately, but it was the start of student equality.

Civil rights sit-in protest in Strong Hall, 1965. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/18 1965: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

March 17: Blood Splashed on ROTC Posters
Charles Hook, president of the University’s Student Peace Union (SPU), slashed his left wrist and spattered his blood on a U.S. Navy bulletin board in the hallway of the Military Science Building on campus. It was a protest against U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam. Hook said the action was “purely spontaneous and an individual gesture” and intended to make the ROTC think about the consequences of their training. United States action in Vietnam would be the cause of several protests on campus and across the country during this time.

March 22-26: Vietnam Vigil at KU
Monday evening began a picket-vigil at the KU Military Science Building. Once again, Charles Hook led the demonstration against U.S. policy in Vietnam and military methods of accomplishing goals. The SPU would have at least one member stand vigil throughout the next several days and nights.

April 28: Park Plaza Fair Housing Picket
Members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and CRC picketed the office of Park Plaza South apartments in Lawrence for not allowing two African American students to rent from them. Led by KU professor Mildred Dickeman, a member of CORE, the picketers stand outside the office from 9 am to 5 pm demanding that the apartment complex implement a non-discriminatory policy.

May 11: Edward Teller H-Bomb Protest
Dr. Edward Teller was a University of California physicist widely regarded as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” His speech discussed “The Responsibility of the Scientist” and the effects of nuclear war. Dr. Teller’s speech was picketed by twelve representatives of SPU at KU. They stood outside Hoch Auditorium and carried signs that said “Dr. Strange Teller?” and “Bombs for Peace?”

May 21: Third ROTC Review Picket
A group of twenty people representing the SPU picketed the annual ROTC Review in Memorial Stadium. They carried signs reading “The U.S. Talks Peace But Drops Bombs,” “Voluntary ROTC Is a Vote for War,” and “Do We Want Peace in Vietnam or a Piece of Vietnam?” According to Charles Hook, the group hoped to influence some of the cadets to drop out of the ROTC program. Two of the men wore suits and several others wore sports shirts with ties. They marched around the football field during the event. The ROTC Reviews were a popular event to picket and protest during the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Flyer outlining the Student Peace Union’s agenda and itinerary for the ROTC Review, undated.
University Archives. Call Number: RG 67/38 Student Peace Union Records.
Click image to enlarge.

September 22: KU Committee to End War in Vietnam forms
The purpose of the committee was “to provide a nucleus for the channeling of student and faculty opposition to the U.S. policies in Vietnam.” Led by Errol Harris, professor of philosophy, the group planned to focus on educational programs like teach-ins and inviting well-known speakers to campus. One member stated that it is the responsibility of students to inform themselves about a situation for which they may be called upon to give their lives. This attitude would continue at KU for several years as the conflict in Vietnam escalated.

Vietnam protestors with signs in front of a store on Massachusetts Street, October 16, 1965.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/18 1965: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

December 6: General Taylor/Vietnam Demonstration
General Maxwell Taylor, former ambassador to South Vietnam, appeared for a press conference in the Regents Room of Strong Hall and then delivered a forty-five-minute talk in Hoch Auditorium. A capacity crowd of about 4,000 people attend the speech. Two different groups demonstrated in front of Hoch to protest certain aspects of the war in Vietnam. One was a silent vigil sponsored by the KU-Vietnam Committee and the other was a vocal protest sponsored by The United Campus Christ Fellowship.

Protests in advance of Maxwell Taylor’s speech, December 5, 1965.
Lawrence Journal-World Photo Collection, University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG LJW 71/18 1965: Student Activities: Student Protests (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

General Maxwell Taylor speaking inside Hoch Auditorium on December 6, 1965.
Lawrence Journal-World Photo Collection, University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG LJW 0/19 Taylor, Maxwell: University General: Visitors (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

JoJo Palko
University Archives Intern