Research on Black Wichita Kansas Announcements

Our Community Heritage Grant proposal has been approved by the Kansas Humanities Council for the full amount of our request ($3,500.00). Thank you for all of your support and contribution in making this possible.

TO: Wichita Public Schools – USD 259, all Social Agencies, and Community Groups & Organizations & Religious Institutions
DATE: December 8th, 2008

The Research on Black Wichita (ROBW) project announces tentative planning to launch a Task Force on Blacks and Wichita Public School Education during February of 2009. The goal of this community-wide initiative is to examine the historical relationships between Wichita’s Black community and the city’s public schools, pending approval of a Community Heritage Grant by the Kansas Humanities Council. In collaboration with several social agencies and institutions, ROBW has received authorization to study Wichita Board of Education Meeting Archives from 1873 through 1958. Because these archives are normally stored at the Underground Vaults in Hutchinson, KS, Task Force members and community volunteers will have access to these documents at Wichita State University in the Special Collections Reading Room, Ablah Library. Community volunteers will be recruited and trained for this project during January, 2009, and the overall Task Force is expected to require six months for completion.

The underlying purpose of the Task Force is to develop a fuller understanding of how past decisioning by the Wichita Board of Education may have informed educational policies and practices leading up to the primary time frame of the ROBW, which is 1945 to 1958. A formal announcement concerning grant status, Task Force start date, and community volunteer recruitment and orientation dates will follow this preliminary announcement in several weeks.

Galyn A. Vesey, PhD.
Project Director ROBW
P.O. Box 20034
Wichita KS 67208
Tel: (316) 685-1174
E-mail: gvesey@bethelks.edu

Class to teach research methods, explore Wichita’s Black history

November 6, 2008

NORTH NEWTON, KAN. – Bethel College students will have a chance this spring to help give the gift of history to Wichita’s Black community.

Under the supervision of Wichita social scientist Galyn Vesey, an adjunct instructor at Bethel, students will contribute to the Research on Black Wichita project, which Vesey directs, by collecting data through document searches and other research methods. The specific time period in question is 1945-58.

“An underlying theme here is that history is socially interrelated by both people and ideas,” Vesey says. “We feel differently about ourselves when we find out how and why things happen, or why they may not. We take action, or we don’t, based on our knowledge of history.”

The period from 1945-58 was “the segregation era” in Wichita and there is little documentation on Wichita’s Black community at that time, Vesey says. Research on Black Wichita (ROBW) has a goal of bringing to life the areas in the city where most Black businesses and organizations thrived, which will require going through boxes of documents from archives, cemeteries and possibly even the Hutchinson salt mines, where municipal records are stored.

When Vesey took on ROBW, he says, people said to him, “This is massive. Do you know what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

“I can’t speak enough volumes about John Sheriff [Bethel executive vice president for institutional development] and his support for me personally and professionally,” Vesey says. “It was his idea to have a class.”

The course Black Wichita: 1945-1958 is designed as a collaborative-inquiry seminar for undergraduate students and is also aimed at members of the community interested in historical research. Vesey and his assistant, Sarah Price, a graduate student in public history at Wichita State University, have designed the course to be 10 percent lecture, 40 percent discussion and the rest lab – primary materials research for ROBW.

Vesey’s hope for the class is to go beyond giving students hands-on research experience while getting some help with ROBW. “A basic principle of education that doesn’t ever get old is [to give students the chance] to learn about different people without giving up the strengths they have,” he says. “This project is not about lambasting white people. It will only focus on race and racism, in a direct or explicit sense, as it is necessary. I want to dwell on the strengths and what was accomplished [by the Black community in Wichita] in spite of poverty and segregation.

“For example, how many people know that there was an all-black professional baseball team in Wichita [in the 1920s]? That shows what can happen even in the worst times. It helps me feel different about myself and what we can accomplish as a people.”

He also hopes to bring recognition to the many unsung heroes and heroines of Black Wichita history. As part of the sit-in at Dockum Drug in Wichita in 1958, the first organized sit-in for the purpose of integrating a segregated business establishment, Vesey says he has been enjoying the 50-year anniversary recognition.

“It’s nice to be recognized for one’s accomplishments,” he says, “but there were so many others who were part of the history of Black Wichita [whose names aren’t known]. For example, there were adults who organized social activities for young people and who ended up instilling values like the importance of education, community and faith in God. There are a lot of people, many of whom are deceased now, who were never recognized for their unselfish roles in the community as volunteers or as mentors, or perhaps as someone who simply encouraged local youth.”

Though it is several years down the road, the tangible product of ROBW is intended to be a book that Bethel College will help publish.

“I hope that the research for this class, and ultimately the book, will renew interest in local Black history as well as pride in the Black community and our accomplishments as a people,” Vesey says. “People who get national recognition all came from a local community and there are people who mentored and nurtured them along the way.

“We can all – not just me – leave something for Wichita that is perhaps more valuable than money: a sense of who we are as a people.”

Black Wichita: 1945-1958 will meet Tuesday and Thursday afternoons beginning Feb. 3, 2009. To learn more about Research on Black Wichita (ROBW), see the project’s Web site at www.robwks.com. For more information about the class, contact Dr. Vesey at 316-685-1174 or gvesey@bethelks.edu. For questions about enrollment, call the Bethel College Office of Admissions, 1-800-522-1887 ext. 230 or 316-284-5230 or e-mail admissions@bethelks.edu.

Bethel College is a four-year liberal arts college affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. Founded in 1887, it is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel is known for its academic excellence and was the only Kansas private college to be ranked in Forbes.com’s listing of “America’s Best Colleges” for 2008. For more information, see the Bethel Web site at www.bethelks.edu.

Source: Bethel College. (2008). Institutional Communications, North Newton, KS.

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Also known as the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Miesner, 1981), the First Kansas Colored Infantry was organized in August, 1862 to assist Union troops in fighting the Civil War. For over a year, there was resistance to use of Black troops in the so-called war between the states. One argument against the use of Blacks was that the war would be short-lived and thus negating the need for Black intervention. Another argument was that use of Black troops by the North might be offensive to southern or Confederate sympathizers. A third argument against use of Blacks to help the North is that Black aid might be viewed among northern whites as a sign of admission of failure (Miesner, 1981). However, the tide began to change with the sentiments of people like Senator James H. Lane, Kansas, and others, when he suggested that a Black man can serve as cannon fodder just as well as his son can (The Leavenworth Daily Conservative, January 29, 1862). Comprised of Black volunteers, Home Guard units were organized in Kansas under Colonel Charles R. Jennison (Cornish, 1953; The Leavenworth Daily Conservative, September 24 and October 8, 1861). Lane was made a Brigadier General by the Secretary of War and charged to organize two regiments of volunteers to aid the Union army (Cornish, 1953), although it appears that Lane’s charge did not include authority to recruit Black volunteers. Nonetheless, Lane did advocate recruitment of Black volunteers to serve in the Union army. And serve they did!

During October, 1862, a segment of the First Kansas Black Regiment engaged a large rebel force near Butler, Missouri in Bates County (Cornish, 1953). Related to the question of whether Blacks have courage and whether Blacks can fight, a news correspondent (The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1862) reports that they “fought like tigers….” Yet relative to Black volunteers, white Union soldiers received three times or more pay (Cornish, 1953). On May 18, 1863, the First Kansas Colored Volunteers suffered a casualty list of 20 men killed in action and several were taken prisoner at an outpost in Baxter Springs, Kansas. After being attacked by a substantial force of Texans and Indians at Cabin Creek, Indian Territory on July 2, 1863, the Union troops forged a counterattack against a numerically superior enemy and drove them with considerable losses from their position (Cornish, 1953; Miesner, 1981). Cornish (1953) reports that Cabin Creek may be the first engagement during the Civil War in which Black and white Union troops fought side by side. This would appear to be a milestone! It may also have implications for the ROBW project. Miesner (1981) comments that the “coolness under fire displayed by the” Black troops earned them much respect from their white Union counterparts at the Cabin Creek battle.

The success at Cabin Creek notwithstanding, Cornish (1953) posits that it was the battle at Honey Springs, Indian Territory (July, 1863) in which the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment achieved its military prominence. Citing an Union Calvary officer who fought at the battle in Honey Springs, Cornish (1953) captures this graphic statement: “I never believed in niggers before, but by Jasus, they are hell for fighting” (The Leavenworth Daily Conservative, July 17, 1863). Miesner (1981) observes that Major General Blunt held all of his command in high esteem, although he particularly had kind remarks for the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment to wit:

Along with the Second Kansas Black Regiment, the First Kansas Black Regiment was mustered-out of military service in October, 1865 (Cornish, 1953).

*Note: Dr. D. T. Cornish indicates that there were four Kansas Negro military organizations that served during the Civil War. The discussion herein is limited for the most part to the First Kansas Colored Infantry.

Cornish, D. T. (1953/May). “Kansas Negro Regiments in the Civil War.” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 20, 417-429.

Miesner, W. H. (1981/Spring). “The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War.” The Oklahoma State Historical Review, 2, 13-26.

The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1862 (from a dispatch by the Leavenworth Conservative).

The Wichita Monrovians (1922) were an all-Black professional baseball team named for the capital city of Monrovia, Liberia on the continent of Western Africa. Not only did the Monrovian organization have its own baseball park (located at 12th and Mosley streets), it used its enormous success on the ball field (regularly defeating both Black and white teams) and at the box office to help raise funds for the *Phyllis Wheatley Children’s Home (Wichita). Wichita, like most of this society, was a predominantly racially segregated environment for well over half of the Twentieth Century. An important exception to this statement is the fact that a Ku Klux Klan baseball team, known as the Wichita Klan Number 6, played the Wichita Monrovians in June of 1925. The final score was Wichita Monrovians 10 and the Wichita Klan Number 6 8. The fact that the game was played at all could have far reaching implications for this research. At least the ROBW investigators think so! We believe that the story of the Wichita Monrovians, the First Kansas Colored Infantry and other important self-initiatives (strength perspectives) such as these could possibly have useful educational, sociocultural, economic, political, and spiritual implications for this investigation. Please see this website periodically as the ROBW evolves.

Sources: Pendleton, J. (1997/Summer). Jim Crow strikes out: Interracial baseball in Wichita, Kansas 1920 – 1935. Kansas History, 20, 86-101; Dreifort, J.E. (Editor). (2001). Baseball history from outside the lines: A reader. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE.

* Note: Several sources indicate that the poet's first name is spelled "Phillis" after the slave ship The Phillis on which she arrived in America. The children's home in Wichita, Kansas spells Phyllis with a "y" as cited. (update 9/26/2008)