A Journal of the Central Plains

Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 33, Number 1 ■ Spring 2010 A publication of the Kansas Historical Society By 1889 Cawker City in Mitchell County was holding its fourth A fair’s success depended upon good publicity, as is evidenced fair. It was by no means the only or even the first Kansas town to by the distractingly colorful posters produced to invite Kansans to sponsor such an event. In fact, there were fairs in Kansas before the these events. The 1889 Cawker City fair was advertised in a series of territory was made a state. The territory’s first fair was held in 1858 posters, one of which touted that “a first-class exhibition is guaranteed, at the now dead McCamish in Johnson County. By the 1870s most and the Managers will endeavor in every possible way to provide for Kansas counties hosted an annual fair. the amusement and comfort of both exhibitors and visitors.” The Early fairs in Kansas were a means of boosterism for towns late-September, Tuesday through Friday fair featured a “good band”; still being built by newly arrived settlers. Organized as opportunities open-competition races on its half-mile track; displays of livestock, at town promotion by local agricultural and mechanical societies, fruits, vegetables, household and agricultural products, needle- these fairs emphasized an area’s natural resources, agricultural work, and fine arts; and “a splendid programme of amusements.” produce, manufactured products, and skilled labor as a lure to attract The promised “grand balloon ascensions, with parachute descent,” increased settlement. It was only later, once communities were well depicted on the poster above, certainly fit this bill, and the performers established and more interested in increased production than mere that floated over the town helped to ensure that the 1889 fair sponsored survival, that Kansas fairs became mostly about farming. by the Cawker County District Fair Association was “conceded to be one of the finest in the state.” Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains VIRGIL W. D EAN Editor Volume 33 Spring 2010 Number 1 MELISSA T UBBS LOYA Associate Editor Editorial Advisory Board EXPERIMENTAL AUTONOMY: DEAN 2 Thomas Fox Averill EMILY TAYLOR AND THE WOMEN’S Donald L. Fixico James L. Forsythe MOVEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY James N. Leiker OF KANSAS Kenneth M. Hamilton David A. Haury by Kelly C. Sartorius Thomas D. Isern Patricia A. Michaelis Craig Miner Rita G. Napier “HOLD THE LINE”: THE DEFENSE 22 Pamela Riney-Kehrberg OF JIM CROW IN LAWRENCE, James E. Sherow KANSAS, 1945–1961 Jennie A. Chinn p. 2 by Brent M. S. Campney Executive Director Kansas Historical Society COVER : Travelers arrive and depart at Lawrence’s THE KANSAS POCKET MAPS OF 42 Atchison, Topeka and Santa OTIS B. GUNN AND DAVID T. Fe depot in the 1950s. Two of this issue’s articles MITCHELL: A CASE OF address life in the city NINETEENTH-CENTURY during the pivotal 1950s and 1960s. BACK COVER : PROMOTIONAL CARTOGRAPHY This 1865 edition of Gunn by Scott R. McEathron & Mitchell’s New Map of Kansas is one of a series— made between 1861 and 1866—that is the focus of an article in this issue. ROY EDWARD FRENCH: PIONEER 54 p. 30 OIL MAN, PHILANTHROPIST, Copyright © 2010 Kansas State Historical Society, Inc. AND DOG BREEDER ISSN 0149-9114. Presidential Address Kansas History (USPS 290 620) is published quarterly by the Kan- by James K. Logan sas State Historical Society, Inc., 6425 SW 6th Avenue, Topeka, Kansas, 66615-1099 (www.kshs. org). It is distributed to members of the Kansas State Historical So- REVIEWS 58 ciety, Inc. Single issues are $7. Pe- riodicals postage paid at Topeka, Kansas, and additional mailing office. Postmaster: Send address changes to Kansas History, 6425 BOOK NOTES 63 SW 6th Avenue, Topeka, Kansas, 66615-1099. Printed by Jostens, Topeka, Kansas. p. 42 Dr. Emily Taylor, dean of women at the University of Kansas, consults with a student. Photo courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 33 (Spring 2010): 2–21 2 KANSAS H ISTORY EXPERIMENTAL AUTONOMY : Dean Emily Taylor and the Women’s Movement at the University of Kansas by Kelly C. Sartorius n 1958 Dr. Emily Taylor (1915 –2004), dean of women at the University of Kansas (KU), pressed senior women to accept keys to their dormitories and sororities. Although issuance of keys on college campuses today is a mere detail at the beginning of the fall semester, in the 1950s that was not the case. Instead, college women found their access to university housing constrained by a complex set of rules created by women’s student government and Iultimately determined by administrators. In Lawrence, Kansas, Dean Taylor’s efforts eventually made KU the second campus in the country to allow senior women keys and the first to allow all women the freedom to come and go as they pleased while in college. 1 As a university administrator, Taylor laid the groundwork for the eventual elimination of the university rules—parietals—that functioned in place of parental oversight for female students. Taylor’s dissolution of regulations received little attention in 1958. At the time, Taylor ranked as one of the youngest deans of women at a major public institution of higher education in the United States. Nevertheless she broached the possibility of keys for senior women in her second year at KU, though she held no tenure at the university and was the only high-level female administrator on campus. At this same time the position of dean of women had begun Kelly C. Sartorius is a PhD candidate at Kansas State University in the Department of History. She completed her master’s degree in American studies at the University of Maryland and holds bachelor of arts degrees from Kansas State University and Wichita State University. She currently serves as senior director of development for the Kansas State University Foundation. The author wishes to thank Dr. Albert N. Hamscher for his helpful comments and close readings of this article, Dr. Sue Zschoche for her insights on the topic, and Dr. Donald R. Levi for his suggestions regarding the structure and organization of the material. In addition, the author appreciates the comments of two anonymous reviewers who strengthened the article through their recommendations. 1. The first institution of higher education to provide women with keys was located in Colorado. Emily Taylor, interview by author, summer 1997, Lawrence, Kansas. The author has not been able to determine which school implemented this policy prior to the University of Kansas. Taylor stated that KU was the first to provide all women keys. Taylor, interview by author, December 13–14, 2003, Lawrence, Kansas. All interviews by the author are in the personal collection of the author. DEAN EMILY TAYLOR 3 to disappear nationally as deans of students took over Within this context, Taylor’s example bears on several their responsibilities. 2 Any of these elements might have historiographical issues: the development of the second derailed Taylor’s plans. Instead the keys she gave her wave of the women’s movement, the roots of student social students quietly opened the door for significant change unrest in higher education, and the primacy of student- in 1966, when the university eliminated curfews for most initiated resistance to campus authorities during the late KU women. At that point, many parents and taxpayers 1960s. When considering cultural change in the twentieth howled in protest. Letters of opposition poured into century, early women’s historians believed that little Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe’s office. Not surprisingly, feminist activism existed between women’s suffrage—the Taylor’s leadership came under scrutiny. Historical first wave of the women’s movement—and the second wave studies of KU student life have noted the 1966 furor over in the late 1960s with the rise of women’s liberation. These eliminating closing hours for women’s residences, but two “waves” reflected different feminist approaches, with little attention has been paid to how the elimination of the first illustrating liberal feminism working to equalize parietals began and how Taylor seeded a flourishing women’s status through existing governmental and social women’s movement at KU. 3 structures and the second seated in radical feminist action, Kansas, a conservative state in the nation’s center, which proposed profound transformation by rejecting seemed an unlikely locale for the activism of the society’s norms as male-defined and fundamentally sexist. women’s movement, civil rights, and student protest. In the 1980s, gender historians began to clarify this vision However, the state experienced the same tensions by revealing that women’s activism existed between the reverberating nationwide in post-World War II America. “first” and “second waves,” particularly during the post- Aside from the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision to war consensus years. 5 desegregate schools, Brown v. Board of Education , Topeka, In other scholarship, historians of student social Kansas , the state also experienced civil rights and student movements on college campuses in the late 1960s have protests. In Wichita, students carried out drugstore sit- maintained that student movements began on the east ins predating those in Greensboro, North Carolina. At and west coasts and consisted of student resistance KU, bombings, arson, and two deaths—one of a KU against university administrations. Like the scholarship student—placed the campus in the midst of the turmoil on the women’s movement, recent research on campus facing more commonly referenced schools like Berkeley unrest has shown more nuance in student activism than and Kent State. Furthermore, by the early 1970s, a group scholars initially believed.

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