“I, Too, Have a Voice”: Authentic Stories from the Brown v. Board Experience in Topeka, Kansas

Topeka has a wealth of citizens who can recall the impact of the Brown v. Board decision on their lives and within the Topeka community before and after the historic decision.

“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.

{B/qKC}: Black/queer Kansas City

Black/queer Kansas City, stylized as {B/qKC}, is a digital archive, historical anthology and moving exhibit that educates audiences on the contributions of local Black LGBTQIA2S+ community members––in turn, liberating their histories from racism and homophobia-fueled erasure.

An Era of Rights: Kansas City’s Struggle for Equality, 1950-1980

We are beginning a digital history project that will document and analyze the major events and themes of the Civil Rights struggle in Kansas City.

Building Black Kansas City

Building Black Kansas City is an oral history project focusing on the African American experience in Kansas City, MO in the mid twentieth century, beginning at the end of World War II. These stories will chronicle the building of Black Kansas City through varying aspects of its culture, collecting and making accessible the voices of individuals who might not otherwise have an opportunity to share their personal stories from a bygone era.

COVID-19 Stories

“COVID-19 stories” includes formal narratives, social media stories, snapshots, drawings, or anything else that captures experiences of the pandemic in Douglas County, Kansas. The gathered stories will be collected in a digital, open access medium and together will illuminate the shared vulnerabilities that connect us to each other.

Digital Douglas County History

The Lawrence Public Library launched this project in partnership with the Watkins Museum of History in 2017. A portal to digital local history, Digital Douglas County History uses Omeka, an open source web-publishing platform, as its framework.

Dockum Drug Store Sit-In Virtual Reality Project

On July 19, 1958, a group of Wichita students began a movement, the Dockum Drug Store Sit-In, that would become a critical moment in the history of ending segregation. The student activists exhibited the attributes, characteristics, and skills of emerging leaders. Through their planning, preparation, organization, commitment, respect, and dedication, they effected change during a very volatile time.

Finding La Yarda: A digital storytelling art installation

Finding La Yarda is an immersive multimedia art experience recreating a room from La Yarda, the housing unit built for Mexican American railroad workers in Lawrence, Kansas from 1920-51. Using film, sound, art and digital storytelling practices, Finding La Yarda brings oral history to life by taking audiences on a cultural journey through time and place.

From Disability Rights to Disability Justice in Kansas: Reflecting on the First Fifty Years, Anticipating Better Futures

The project chronicles the pursuit of disability rights and justice in Kansas as an ongoing struggle. Some fifty years ago, a disability rights movement emerged in the United States along with passage of federal laws mandating accessibility and forbidding discrimination. This movement has expanded, diversified, and responded to myriad challenges.

Kansas: An Eclogue

KANSAS: An Eclogue will be a full-length documentary film. The project evolved from a walking journey across the state of Kansas by the film’s co-directors, Patrick Ross and Joshua Nathan, independent filmmakers from Kansas, now living in Los Angeles, CA. In more than 35 hours of filmed interviews, they captured stories about rural/small-town Kansas life.

Queer Voices

Queer Voices gathers local LGBTQ+ members together for evenings of story telling from our community. Speakers share true stories from their lives that run the gamut from historic protests, bad first dates, to the dangers and joys of existing in Kansas as a queer person. With the support of Stories for All, participants will be able to opt in to having their stories recorded to be added to an archive of queer experiences in this area.

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.

Stories of African-American Life in Lawrence

This project will collect stories from local black families about the racial history of Lawrence, KS. In recent years, the local NAACP chapter has worked with the city and the Equal Justice Initiative to bring high-profile moments of local racism to light. But for every moment of high-profile racism, there are dozens of untold stories of the black experience.

The Chicano Movement in Kansas

This project consists of oral histories of Kansas Chicano Movement leaders from the 1970s.These activists drew inspiration from the national Chicano Movement and their initiatives impacted the Kansas Latinx population in ways that reverberate to this day in the areas of civil rights, educational opportunities and voting power.

Under the Rainbow: Oral Histories of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (GLBTQ) People in Kansas

Over the last 10-15 years there has been a noticeable increase in interest in the field of queer rural studies to correct for previous assumptions that queer history was always urban and usually on the coast. Yet, even within the scholarship that has been produced, Kansas is frequently overlooked as a site where GLBTQ people exist and have lived for a very long time.

Untold Stories: Former Enslaved Americans Who Sought Freedom in Lawrence, KS

“Untold Stories: Former Enslaved Americans Who Sought Freedom in Lawrence, KS” shines a light on explores the often-overlooked reality of life for the previously enslaved, who continued to struggle to achieve equality long after the war.

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.