Kenneth Spencer Research Library

This weekend’s three-day commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” recognized one of the pivotal events of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.  The occasion drew President Barack Obama, the First Lady and their daughters, former President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, as well as a delegation of bipartisan Congressional representatives to Selma, Alabama.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, about 600 civil rights activists marched in silence from Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama for the Montgomery state capitol building to memorialize the shooting death of Jimmy Lee Jackson by a state trooper at a peaceful voting rights rally in Marion, Alabama and to protest against the intransigent opposition to African Americans registering to vote.  The opposition to voting rights was especially strong in Selma, Alabama, where half of the population was African American and had not been allowed to vote since the late nineteenth century. Immediately after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were halted by heavily armed state troopers and local police who ordered them to turn back. When they refused, the troopers and police, in full view of news media and other photographers, mercilessly beat and tear-gassed the marchers. Today, this tragic event in our nation’s history is often referred to as “Bloody Sunday.” A week later, in a televised speech, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked for a voting rights bill, and on August 6, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Spencer Research Library’s Kansas Collection includes sources that document the region’s support for Bloody Sunday’s civil rights workers and their efforts. We share a selection of these documents.

ITEMS FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE COLLECTIONS

The Wichita Chapter of the NAACP was an early leader in the Modern Civil Rights Movement’s strategy of breaking down the color line through non-violent, direct action.   The Chapter’s Youth Council organized the movement’s first lunch counter sit-in on July 19, 1958.  A month later, the Youth Council in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma conducted their sit-in.

On March 20, 1965, the Topeka Branch of the NAACP organized and led a Sympathy March for the civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama.

Samuel C. Jackson served as the president of the Topeka Chapter of the NAACP, which had been first established in 1913. Born in Kansas City, Kansas, Jackson earned his law degree from Washburn University Law School and was a WWII veteran. During the fall of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the first U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Four years later, he was appointed General Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by President Richard M. Nixon.

 

Photograph: Samuel C. Jackson portrait. Samuel C. Jackson Collection, Call Number: RH MS-P 557, Box 1, Folder 4.
Click image to enlarge.

The Topeka Branch of the NAACP distributed this flyer to mobilize community participation and support for the Sympathy March.

 

Citizen’s Attention flyer. Samuel C. Jackson Collection.
Call Number: RH MS 557, Box 1, Folder 11. Click image to enlarge.

On Saturday morning, March 20, 1965, about 150 marchers began their journey from Second Baptist Church on 424 N.W. Laurent Street in Topeka, Kansas and walked across the Topeka Avenue Bridge, wearing black armbands and carrying signs that read “Topeka NAACP Deplores Selma’s Brutality,” “Mourners March,” and “Police Brutality Must Go.”

Newspaper clipping of “Topeka Rights March.” Samuel C. Jackson Collection.
Call Number: RH MS 557, Box 1, Folder 11. Click image to enlarge.

The Sympathy March continued through the streets of Topeka, Kansas.

Civil Rights Marchers.  Topeka, KS, 1965. J. B. Anderson Collection.
Call Number: RH MS-P 1230 Box 1, Folder 31.  Click image to enlarge.

When the Sympathy March reached the downtown area of Topeka, about 100 more participants joined them as the demonstration moved toward South Kansas Avenue to the Topeka Post Office where they placed in the mail hundreds of letters and petitions to the Kansas Congressional Delegation, urging them to support upcoming civil rights legislation.

Sympathy March, Topeka, March 1965.  J.B. Anderson Collection.
Call Number: RH MS-P 1230 Box 1, Folder 31.  Click image to enlarge.

In the Greater Kansas City area and in Independence, Missouri, local chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the NAACP led silent marches throughout the day on Sunday, March 14, 1965. More than 1,200 people participated in these demonstrations.

Greater Kansas City Marches. March 14, 1965. Greater Kansas City Council on Religion and Race Collection.
Call Number: RH MS 786, Box 8, File 12.  Click image to enlarge.

At the Music Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, the Greater Kansas City Council on Religion and Race, an organization of clergy and lay members of all faiths dedicated to the advancement and attainment of interracial justice and charity, sponsored a community memorial service for the Reverend James J. Reeb, who was murdered by white vigilantes in Selma, Alabama on March 11, 1965. He had traveled to Selma a few days after “Bloody Sunday” to support the area’s civil rights workers. A Unitarian Universalist minister and a social worker, The Reverend Reeb was born in Wichita Kansas and resided in Russell, Kansas as a youth.

Reeb Memorial Program. Greater Kansas City Council on Religion and Race Collection.
Call Number: RH MS 786, Box 8, File 12. Click image to enlarge.

The KU Libraries is a co-sponsor of the African and African American Studies Department’s public program Selma: A Film Screening and Panel Discussion on March 25, 2015, at 5:30p.m. in Wescoe Hall, Room 3140.

Deborah Dandridge
Field Archivist and Curator
African American Experience Collections

Today marks the 179th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo. Spencer Research Library is home to a small collection about the Alamo’s most famous defender: frontiersman and former Tennessee Congressman David Crockett (1786-1836).

The cover of Fisher’s Crockett Almanac, 1843.
Call Number: B10218. Click image to enlarge.

The items I find most interesting are the Crockett Almanacs. At least forty-five were published by various firms over a twenty-year period beginning in 1835, the year that Crockett lost his Congressional seat and famously told his constituents that “since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” Shown here are selected pages from the 1843 edition of Fisher’s Crockett Almanac.

“Valuable Recipes” and the March calendar in
Fisher’s Crockett Almanac, 1843. This information might
come in handy if you have, say, mildewy linen or
tarnished gilt frames. Call Number: B10218. Click image to enlarge.

The Crockett almanacs contained some of the same information found in other early American almanacs, including calendars, sunrise and sunset times, astronomical data, and important dates, historical anniversaries, and holidays. Primarily, however, the almanacs focused on a comical, exaggerated version of Crockett, drawing and expanding upon popular books and plays that had already been written by and about him. As historian Paul Andrew Hutton explained in an article about the almanacs, they were filled with a cast of peculiar and outlandish characters; folk wisdom; tall hunting tales based on the “celebrated hunting skills of the real Crockett” (16); and stories of “daring escapes from wild beasts, descriptions of animals, and dialect humor” that the real Crockett was masterful at telling (15).

Fictional Ben Hardin was introduced to readers as an old sailor who
met Davy Crockett and “decided to devote himself to the continuation
of his friend’s almanacs” (Hutton 15). Beginning in 1841, the almanacs
were also based on the myth that Crockett had survived the
Battle of the Alamo and was a prisoner in Mexico forced to work
in the mines. Fisher’s Crockett Almanac, preface, 1843.
Call Number: B10218. Click image to enlarge.

Selected stories from Fisher’s Crockett Almanac, 1843.
Call Number: B10218. Click image to enlarge.

Taken together, writes Hutton, the almanacs created a fictional version of David Crockett in which he was “a tall-tale trickster with the strength of Hercules, the valor of Lancelot, the veracity of Baron Munchausen, and the wit of Brer Rabbit. This comic superman insured Crockett a rare immortality, enshrined the humor of the Old Southwest in print, provided an eventually triumphant rival to the romantic, class-conscious frontier hero of James Fenimore Cooper, and further defined the emerging American national character” (10).

In short, writes Hutton,

A celebrity in his own time, Crockett was elevated to near-mythical status by his heroic death at the Alamo in 1836. Rediscovered in the middle of the twentieth century, he again became a towering figure of American popular culture. He had courted fame while alive, and unlike Daniel Boone – whose mantle as America’s great frontier hero he inherited – he had taken an active role in the creation of his own overblown legend. His story, however, quickly became the property of others. They greatly embellished the core of truth he had projected to create the archetypical backwoodsman and Jacksonian self-made man who captured the imagination of the world. None were more important important in this heroic evolution than the imaginative creators of the wildly popular Crockett almanacs (10).

Fisher’s Crockett Almanac, back cover, 1843. Call Number: B10218. Click image to enlarge.

Want to know more about David/Davy Crockett? Check out these sources at Spencer and Watson libraries.

The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett, of West Tennessee (1833): This anonymously-published work has been attributed to Matthew St. Clair Clarke and copyright holder James S. French. Hugely popular, it was republished under the title Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee (1833).

An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East (1835): Increasingly displeased seeing others prosper from writing about – and in some cases caricaturing – him and seeking a way to pay off his debts, Crockett wrote his autobiography, published as A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee (1834). He promoted the work during the grand tour described in this book. It was written by friend and fellow Congressman William Clark based on newspaper accounts, other documents, and notes provided by Crockett.

The Life of Martin Van Buren, Heir-Apparent to the “Government,” and the Appointed Successor of General Andrew Jackson (sixteenth edition, 1837): This bitterly partisan work reflected Crockett’s virulent opposition to Jackson and Van Buren. He lent his name to the title page of this book, although it was written by Augustin Clayton. The publisher was so nervous about being sued for libel that the firm left its name off the title page of the first edition.

Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1837): This is a work of mostly fiction by Richard Penn Smith masquerading as fact, allegedly based on Crockett’s own diary, a document that does not exist.

The Crockett Almanac (1839, 1840, 1841)

Ben Hardin’s Crockett Almanac (1842)

Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis (1998)

Reference

Hutton, Paul Andrew. “‘Going to Congress and making allmynacks is my trade’: Davy Crockett, His Almanacs, and the Evolution of a Frontier Legend.” Journal of the West 37:2 (April 1998): 10-22.

Note

I previously wrote about the Crockett Almanacs for the blog of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public 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 3,600 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

It may still feel like winter on Mount Oread, but spring is just around the corner, and with it the potential for strong storms. We selected today’s images thinking about Kansas Severe Weather Awareness Week, which ends tomorrow, and today’s specific focus on thunderstorm and lightning safety.

Lightning flashes above the Campanile, with Spencer Research Library
faintly visible behind it, 1980. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Storms 1980 Prints: Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Firefighters battling a blaze at Hoch Auditorium, June 15, 1991. The building was struck
by lightning during a violent thunderstorm that, according to the Kansas Alumni magazine,
“pelted the Lawrence area with heavy rain and pea-sized hail.” University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/33 1991 Slides: Campus: Buildings: Hoch Auditorium (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Tree in front of Watson Library (not shown) damaged by a storm, 1991. This may have been
the same June 15th storm that caused the fire at Hoch Auditorium. Fraser Hall is
in the background. University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Storms 1991 Negatives:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

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 2,600 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

The KU community recently mourned the death of long-time professor and internationally-recognized sculptor Elden C. Tefft. Examples of Tefft’s artwork can be seen across northeast Kansas and the KU campus, including two of its signature sculptures: “Academic Jay” in front of Strong Hall and “Moses,” Tefft’s self-acclaimed masterwork, outside Smith Hall.

Elden Tefft shortly after he began teaching at KU, 1951.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty:
Tefft, Elden Prints (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Tefft working on the university seal, 1955. KU’s first chancellor, Rev. R. W. Oliver,
chose the seal in 1866, and Tefft redesigned it for the university’s centennial.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty: Tefft, Elden Prints (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Tefft working on “Academic Jay,” 1958. Lawrence Journal-World Photo.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty: Tefft, Elden
Prints (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

“Academic Jay” in front of Strong Hall, 1978. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Jawhawk Statue (Tefft) 1978 Prints: Campus:
Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden Tefft with his sculpture of Moses, early 1980s. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Moses 1980s Prints: Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Installation of “Moses” sculpture in front of Smith Hall, 1982.
Note the stained-glass window “Burning Bush” behind Moses. Both are
prominent components of KU’s seal. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Moses 1982 Negatives: Campus:
Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden Tefft and his son Kim repairing “Academic Jay” after vandals damaged it, 1996.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Jawhawk Statue (Tefft) 1996 Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden C. Tefft was born in Hartford, Kansas, twenty miles southeast of Emporia, in 1919. He moved with his family to Lawrence as a boy, eventually graduating from Lawrence Liberty Memorial High School and before entering KU. Service in the Army Air Corps during World War II interrupted his studies, but Tefft returned to KU to earn his bachelor’s (1949) and master’s (1950) of fine arts in design. Tefft began his teaching career at KU in 1950, founding the university’s undergraduate and graduate sculpture degree programs. Two years later, he began construction of what is believed to have been the first complete collegiate bronze sculpture studio and foundry in the nation. Throughout his career, Tefft also traveled extensively, researching bronze casting techniques and setting up bronze foundries. He is credited as the founder of the International Sculpture Center, the world’s largest sculptor’s association and research center. Tefft was awarded the State of Kansas Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement upon his retirement from KU in 1990.

To learn more about Elden Tefft, see the biography “Elden Tefft: An Informal Look at a Founding Father of Twentieth Century Bronze Casting in the United States” by Craig Voorhees, available online through KU ScholarWorks. KU Libraries also has several of Tefft’s published writings, which you can find by conducting an author search in the online catalog.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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

Conservation Services has system-wide responsibilities, but an increasing focus is on Spencer Library materials and collections. There are two main conservation workspaces: a full-fledged conservation lab in Watson Library and workroom in Spencer Library. In this post, we feature the Stannard Conservation Lab.

KU Libraries has had a book bindery/mendery from at least the 1960s, located in the basement of Watson Library. The image below shows the woman on the left sewing a book on a sewing frame, and other staff standing by books batched for case binding.

View of University of Kansas bindery, before 1965, located in the basement of Watson Library.

As part of the drive in American research libraries in the 1980s and 1990s to build conservation laboratories to serve a wider range of collection needs, in 1994 the Libraries organized a Preservation Department and recruited Brian Baird as the first Preservation Librarian. Almost immediately, he began to plan, build, staff, and equip a modern conservation laboratory. These efforts came to fruition in 1997 with three major events: Meg Brown was appointed as the Libraries’ first full-time conservator; a renovation project was completed on the ground floor of Watson Library to create contiguous working space for the Preservation Department; and funds were raised from private donors to equip the facility.

 

Two views of the Stannard Lab, looking west (left image) and east (right image).

On March 19, 1998, the University of Kansas Libraries dedicated the Jerry and Katherine Stannard Conservation Laboratory and paid tribute to Jerry and Katherine Stannard, the Southwestern Bell Foundation, the Ethel and Raymond F. Rice Foundation, the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation, the Lawrence Walmart Green Team, and Kathryn Davis for their generous gifts that made it possible to equip the Stannard Laboratory. At the dedication, Erica Stannard-Schenk, Jerry and Katherine’s daughter, unveiled a beautiful quilt that is now on permanent display in the entrance of the laboratory.

View of the storeroom outside the Stannard Lab.

In 2011, the department was renamed Conservation Services. A second space in Spencer Library was acquired to take care of simple treatments on site, so as to reduce the transportation of rare materials from one library to another. The department’s focus continues to evolve, but we pay tribute to the events that brought us to where we are today.

Whitney Baker (using some text written by Brian Baird)
Head, Conservation Services