“Unsettled Lawrence”: Challenging Collective Memory of Settlement Through the Oral and Public Histories of Unhoused Populations in Lawrence

We often tell the history of Lawrence, Kansas from the perspective of settlement in the “great American desert.” Even moments of dis-settlement, such as Quantrill’s Raid, are couched as victorious resettlement. Such a narrative elevates settling (often by white “homesteaders”) while stigmatizing other forms of occupancy as non-settlement.

Reclaiming Home: Remembering the Topeka Bottoms

“Reclaiming Home” will tell the story of Topeka’s Bottoms neighborhood through oral history, a documentary and art. In the 1950s and ’60s, more than 3,000 Topekans were forced to leave their homes and businesses in the Bottoms district in downtown to make way for new real estate development as part of the Urban Renewal Project.

Voices of the Displaced

Gentrification, the calculated reclamation of black urban spaces for financially affluent new homeowners, is spreading through black communities across America. After years of economic oppression and deprivation, the black community now stands at the edge of perhaps the greatest community dispersal in its history.

Wichita Nonwhite Business Owners tell Their Stories

Nonwhite entrepreneurs rarely appear in broad-based histories or surveys of American enterprise. Existing studies of ethnic/nonwhite businesses focus upon commercial operations; this project gives priority to illuminating the motivations of nonwhite individuals to become entrepreneurs.