Additional stops on the Trail that help tell the foundational story of the role of African Americans to Kansas history …
- Wichita – Dockum Sit-in exhibit at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, 204 S. Main St. This Museum has a significant display providing information on the Dockum Sit-in that took place in Wichita during the summer of 1958.
- Great Bend – Oscar Micheaux burial site at the Great Bend Cemetery, 4500 Broadway Ave. Oscar Micheaux was a successful novelist (The Case of Mrs. Wingate was the first best-selling novel written by an African American) and film-maker (he produced more than 40 feature length films and his last film, Betrayal, was the first African American-produced film to open in white theatres). Micheaux died in 1951 and he chose to be buried in Great Bend, Kansas, one of his two adopted homes. His tombstone reads: “A Man Ahead of His Time.” In 1988, the Great Bend community erected a monument in honor and memory of Mr. Micheaux.
- Minneapolis – George Washington Carver homestead at the Ottawa County Historical Museum, 110 S. Concord St. George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist and inventor and a Professor at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, and after living briefly in Fort Scott, Kansas, Carver moved to Minneapolis, Kansas (living with ex-slaves Ben and Lucy Seymour), where he earned his diploma at Minneapolis High School. He was awarded the Spingard Medal by the NAACP and in 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a “[b]lack Leonardo.” The Ottawa County Historical Museum has a huge collection of George Washington Carver materials. Also see Kansas Historical Marker (“Homestead of a Genius”) and a marker noting Carver’s homestead near present day Beeler, Kansas (Ness County).
- Topeka – “Tragic Prelude” mural and the Brown v. BOE mural at the Kansas State Capitol Building, SW 8th & Van Buren. The Capitol has been designated as a “Point of Interest” because of the historic mural by John Steurt Curry of John Brown (giving a sense of the beginnings of Kansas as a State) and the new mural by Michael Young commemorating the Supreme Court’s historic decision of May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education.
- Topeka – “Willing to Die for Freedom” section at the Kansas Museum of History, 6425 SW 6th Ave. The Museum has a section devoted to Bleeding Kansas provides information on the Civil War and the Underground Railroad. The Museum considers this period to be one of the defining moments in Kansas history and it has major collections devoted to these topics.