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A landmark civil rights case of the 20th century, Brown v. Board of Education, originated in Topeka in 1951 when the clergyman father of a nine-year-old black girl led her to the door of an all-white school. She was denied enrollment, and the decision that was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954—basically stating that segregated education, even if “separate but equal,” is inherently unequal and must be eliminated with all due speed—became the basis for most of the civil rights decisions that have been applied to schools since that time.
The Department of Education is headed by a commissioner and an elected state board of education. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the board was an ongoing centre of controversy owing to its replacement of the teaching of evolutionary theory in science classes in favour of the theory of intelligent design.
There are some 300 public school districts throughout the state. A number of two-year colleges and vocational-technical schools are operated by the communities in which they are located.
Kansas has six public universities. Fort Hays State University (established 1902), Pittsburg State University (1903), and Emporia State University (1863) offer liberal arts degrees. The University of Kansas (1859) is located in Lawrence, Kansas State University (1863) in Manhattan, and Wichita State University (1895) in Wichita. Kansas State, recognized as having one of the country’s leading agricultural colleges, was the first land-grant college in the United States. The state’s medical school is part of the University of Kansas Medical Center, with its campus at Kansas City. In 1971 the School of Medicine established a second campus at Wichita to expand its clinical teaching facilities. There are two law schools, one at the University of Kansas and the other at Washburn University (1865) in Topeka. In addition, there are some 20 church-affiliated, private four-year colleges in Kansas, all offering liberal arts degrees.
Cultural life
Although it lies far from the great cultural centres on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Kansas has long enjoyed a thriving cultural life with an emphasis on folk arts. In the 1940s and early ’50s, Kansas City, Kansas, was a leading centre of jazz and blues music, the home of artists such as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Big Joe Turner; the riverfront section of the city houses a number of well-attended jazz clubs today. Most of the larger cities have amateur theatre groups, and Topeka and Wichita support symphony orchestras. The numerous colleges and universities in the state provide a concentration of art and music in many small communities that otherwise would have no comparable activities. In the sparsely populated areas of western Kansas, a large number of the small communities have few cultural institutions except a public library. Wichita, however, has several art museums and a cultural and civic centre with two theatres, an exhibition hall, and a convention hall. The extreme eastern areas of Kansas look to Kansas City, Missouri, for cultural attractions. In the mid-1960s, the Kansas Arts Commission was formed; funded by the state, it seeks to encourage the development of the arts, often providing money for communities or organizations that want to develop cultural events. The University of Kansas has an outstanding museum of natural history and an art museum. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, at Abilene, boyhood home of the 34th U.S. president, contains the papers and memorabilia of his presidency and military career. The Wizard of Oz Museum in Wamego, near Manhattan, houses memorabilia related to L. Frank Baum’s famous children’s book about Kansas girl Dorothy Gale in the land of Oz, as well as its various stage and movie adaptations. In Liberal, in the southwestern part of the state, the Seward County Historical Museum maintains a replica of Dorothy’s house—a 1907 farmhouse furnished with antiques from the 1930s to look like the house depicted in the 1939 movie version.
In addition to an art museum, the small community of Lindsborg has a biennial folk festival, the Svensk Hyllningsfest, which honours the Swedish pioneers who settled the town. It features Swedish costumes, traditional food, folk dances, and displays of the arts and crafts of local artisans. Wilson has a Czech festival each year. Examples of eccentric folk sculpture are found in Lucas, where Samuel Perry Dinsmoor, a self-taught artist, sculpted in concrete and limestone his own idea of the Garden of Eden and other biblical stories, along with illustrations of populist themes; and at Hiawatha, the site of the Davis Memorial, a mausoleum with life-size statues depicting the stages of life of John Milburn Davis and Sarah Hart Davis, a prosperous local farm couple.
Kansas has an extensive system of state parks and recreation areas, many of them associated with reservoirs. There are no national parks or monuments in the state, but the National Park Service does operate several national historic sites and Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills near Emporia. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service maintains Cimarron National Grassland in the southwest corner of the state.
History
Native Americans, explorers, and settlers
Archaeological exploration has uncovered evidence of Native American cultures that existed in Kansas for many centuries before the Europeans settled on the land. From about ad1200 to 1500, there had been a thriving agricultural society in the area of the Republican and Big Blue rivers. El Cuartelejo, near Scott City in west-central Kansas, is the site of the northernmost pueblo ruins in North America. By the 1500s, most permanent settlements were abandoned in favour of migratory camps.
The first known European explorers were Spaniards under Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who in 1541 rode northward from Mexico seeking the gold of the legendary Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. Juan Padilla, a priest with the expedition, founded the first mission in the territory, possibly north of present-day Wichita. The territory was claimed for France in 1682 by René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, who explored the upper Mississippi River valley. During the 18th century, French fur traders had a flourishing exchange with the Kansas Indians in what is now the northeastern part of the state, and whose name was given to the region. Spain claimed Kansas briefly in the early 18th century, but after losing a brief but furious battle to the French in what is now Nebraska, Spain abandoned its territorial ambitions there.
The region passed to the United States as a part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike passed through Kansas in 1806 and described it as the “Great American Desert”—a false image that still persists. Kansas was thoroughly explored during the following decades, but westward-bound settlers and miners passed through it without staying.
From 1830 to 1854, Kansas was in an area designated as Indian Territory, where tribes who had occupied eastern lands wanted by whites were relocated. After 1854 most of those groups were further removed to what is now Oklahoma. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created two territories and opened both to settlement, allowing residents to determine whether their future states would be free or allow slavery. The rush began, and Kansas became a major breeding ground for the American Civil War, as North and South each attempted to send the most settlers into the new territory. Most early settlement was near the eastern border, and Free Staters were harassed constantly by Border Ruffians (proslavery Missourians who crossed the border to agitate against abolitionism). One notable incident was the sacking of Lawrence by Southern guerrillas in 1856. The abolitionist John Brown, with his sons and a few other men, retaliated by dragging five of their proslavery neighbours from their homes and killing them, an incident known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Proslavery forces attempting to avenge this massacre were captured by Brown, who became a hero to the Northern sympathizers. Hundreds of such incidents won the territory the name Bleeding Kansas.