Kenneth Spencer Research Library

In honor of Veteran’s Day on November 11, we feature this item from the Verlean Tidwell Family Collection, from our African American Experience Collections. This collection was donated by Dr. John Edgar Tidwell, a KU English Department faculty member. His mother, Mrs. Verlean Tidwell, served as a member of Maple Street Baptist Church in Independence, Kansas, for more than 70 years.

This handmade Veteran’s Day book was compiled by Mrs. Arletta Moore in 1966 to honor veterans of World War I and II from Maple St. Baptist Church.

The decorated cover features glitter, gold stickers, and a silk flower. Call number RH MS 1286 Box 10, Kansas Collection. Click image to enlarge.

The book includes clippings about war, a typed list of veterans and their next of kin, poems, and handwritten notations. Call number RH MS 1286 Box 10, Kansas Collection. Click images to enlarge.

Detail of handwritten Pledge of Allegiance, along with gold stickers and handwritten “war” in block letters. Call number RH MS 1286 Box 10, Kansas Collection. Click image to enlarge.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 9,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

If you’ve ever visited Spencer Research Library, you may have noticed a plaque adjacent to our third-floor entrance: “This research library is a gift of Helen Foresman Spencer in memory of her husband Kenneth Aldred Spencer, November 8, 1968.” That was date, forty-seven years ago Sunday, that the library was dedicated in a private ceremony attended by several hundred of Mrs. Spencer’s friends and educators from across the country. It marked the completion of the library’s construction, which took nearly two years. A public opening occurred one week later.

A story about the new library in the December 1968/January 1969 Kansas Alumni magazine noted that “Mrs. Spencer waxed and polished the furnishings and the floor of the Spencer Room [memorial office] herself before the opening and created floral arrangements for many of the rooms” (12).

Spencer Research Library dedication ceremony on the terrace, November 8, 1968.
British novelist, scientist, and government official Sir Charles Percy Snow is at the rostrum.
Mrs. Spencer is shown sitting to the right of the entrance, behind the speaker.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/82 1968 Dedication Prints:
Campus: Buildings: Spencer Research Library (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

We look forward to sharing more photographs and documents about Spencer Research Library’s beginning and early years as we approach our fiftieth anniversary in 2018!

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

November 3rd is Election Day here in the U.S. and although it’s not time for the presidential elections, the races and ballot initiatives taking place are no less vital. To celebrate the importance of civic engagement, I’ve selected a few items from Spencer Library’s Kansas Collection that highlight different ways of being politically active.

One of our researchers from the University of Chicago found this delicious thank-you note. Coffeyville, Kansas, native Bruce McKinney was thanked by Bill Clinton and Al Gore for his vote by receiving his very own copy of Hillary Clinton’s Chippers recipe!

Hillary Clinton’s Chippers Recipe, circa 1992-1996.
Papers of Bruce McKinney, 1900-2008. Call Number: RH MS 1164.
Click image to enlarge.

Mervyn Anderson was an active member of the League of Women Voters of Kansas. Her dedication to informing Kansans on political issues and candidates is evident in these two items from her papers.

War time (probably referring to the Vietnam War) pledge card for the
League of Women Voters of Lawrence, Kansas.
Mervyn Anderson Papers, 1956-1987. Call Number: RH MS 1091.
Click image to enlarge.

Cover of the April 8-9, 1959 League of Women Voters State Convention
program in Salina, Kansas. Mervyn Anderson Papers, 1956-1987.
Call Number: RH MS 1091. Click image to enlarge.

Many Kansans have engaged politically by serving in local, state, or national government. Robert C. Caldwell is an excellent example of a public servant to the city of Salina, where he was elected as the first African American mayor in 1970.

Two identical keys to the city of Salina, Kansas, undated.
The key at the top displays the side engraved with Salina, Kansas,
while the key on the bottom is engraved with Mayor’s Key.
Robert C. Caldwell Family Papers, 1922-1999. Call Number: RH MS Q119. Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Library Assistant and Supply Coordinator

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 9,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

This Saturday’s Homecoming game will be against Oklahoma, so this week’s photo – taken by well-known Lawrence photographer Duke D’Ambra – captures the Jayhawks’ dramatic win over the Sooners in the 1946 game at Memorial Stadium.

KU’s winning field goal against Oklahoma on November 9, 1946.
Photograph by Duke D’Ambra. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 66/14 1946 Games Oklahoma: Athletic Department: Football (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Information on the back of the photograph describes what happened.

At the KU-Oklahoma game in Lawrence, Kans. in 1946 it was foggy, dark, gloomy – and the score was 13-13 – and only one minute and 20 seconds remaining. With K.U. in possession, Paul Turner, an unknown, came on the field and kicked a field goal to win for Kansas. See the ball over the bars?

A May 22, 1972, article in the Lawrence Journal-World announced D’Ambra’s death and further described the scene captured in the photograph. As the article also noted, D’Amdra was a “familiar figure on the sidelines at KU sports events.”

One of [D’Ambra’s] most famous photos came in November of 1946 when Kansas and Oklahoma were tied 13-all in a league football title showdown. With 75 seconds left, KU’s Paul Turner was called on to try an “impossible” field goal from 41 yards out in a driving rain that made Memorial Stadium‘s field a quagmire.

D’Ambra, with a beat-up box-style Graflex camera was the only photographer to get into place for the shot. Turner did the “impossible” and D’Ambra chronicled the ball passing through the crossbars to give Kansas a 16-13 upset of the powerful Sooners.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, making it illegal to produce, sell or transport “intoxicating” liquors. It passed in spite of President Wilson’s veto. It was also known as the Volstead Act, named after Congressman Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota, who worked closely with the Anti-Saloon League to draft and promote the bill until it became law. The Volstead Act implemented the Prohibition (Eighteenth) Amendment by defining the process and procedures for banning alcoholic beverages, as well as their production and distribution.

Men at an unknown saloon in June 1919. The caption reads “fill ’em up, boys; last chance.”
Ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment was certified on January 16, 1919;
it took effect one year later. Call Number: PH PH P238. Click image to enlarge.

Ardmore [Oklahoma] Police Department members pouring out barrels of alcohol,
November 22, 1916. Call Number: PH PH P1617. Click image to enlarge.

In Kansas, however, prohibition had been an issue even before statehood in 1861. Organized groups such as the Order of Good Templars, the Kansas State Temperance Union, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union fought for statewide prohibition, eventually establishing Kansas as the first state to adopt prohibition into its constitution. Strongly prohibitionist, Republican governor John P. St. John was elected in 1878, and by this time the legislature was like-minded. The state law was ratified by voters in November 1880, and prohibition in Kansas took effect on January 1, 1881, making it illegal to manufacture or sell intoxicating liquors in the state.

Kansas delegates to a Michigan prohibition meeting, undated.
Call Number: RH PH P164. Click image to enlarge.

A Prohibition pamphlet published in Kansas City, Kansas,
by M. A. Waterman, etc., 1911. Call Number: RH C4581.
Click image to enlarge.

Prohibition may have been the law of the land in Kansas, but saloons and bars simply paid fines and used loopholes in the law to stay in business. Established temperance organizations still worked to get stronger laws and ensure enforcement of them, but the failure to enforce the law, combined with a decline of support for prohibition among the general population, caused a rise of prohibitionist radicals such as Carrie Nation (1846-1911). Nation and her followers attracted attention to the liquor issue by using unconventional methods, such as smashing saloons with rocks and hatchets and getting arrested as a result. Topeka, Kansas, became Nation’s home base as she traveled around, in state and out, taking her message to the people. While her methods may have been radical, they did get results. She addressed a joint session of the Kansas legislature, went on a lecture tour, and published a temperance newspaper called the Smasher’s Mail. In 1907 the government began real enforcement of the prohibition laws, and the governor and the legislature made the laws stronger, closing loopholes.

The Smasher’s Mail, edited by Carrie Nation,
“your loving home defender.”
Topeka, Kansas: Nick Chiles, 1901.
Call Number: RH VLT H5. Click image to enlarge.

For several years national, state, and local law enforcement officials worked to make the country “dry.” However, by the 1930s, most citizens thought prohibition had failed, and the amendment was repealed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. However, in Kansas prohibition continued to be the law until 1948, when it was finally voted down. Alcohol in Kansas returned to being subject to local option laws, much like those that had been in place seventy years before.

Two songs from The Prohibition Bugle Call: New Songs for Prohibition Clubs,
Temperance Societies, Gospel Temperance Meetings and the Home Circle by H. H. Hawley.
New York: Biglow & Main, 1887. Call Number: Shull C148. Click image to enlarge.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services