America, dreams of the quality featuring the 1848 womens rights convention. Kansas city, missouri, is known as the city of fountains with over 200 officially registered in the metro area. It could easily be known as the city of boulevards. Here is George Kessler and the developer of the park and boulevard system. Todays park and boulevard system is about 130 miles. Our system today has about 12,000 acres of parkland in the city. That 12,000 acres is within about 310 square miles of kansas city. Ofaddition to that 130 miles parks and boulevards, we have 230 parks in the city. They range all the way in size from a little under 2000 acres to Neighborhood Parks that are less than an acre. Everyone has a little different, and they are all different. Some of these larger parks are more of what is considered to be a community or regional park. Timeframe,s, 1890 candace was a wild western town. Zoning,snt a lot of planning. Public health was a big issue associated with urban development concerns. All of those things did not have a really modern city. You built on the western fringes of missouri. The city tried to become the city with more modern development and control over what was happening at that time. The leadership of the city make that happen. The name George Kessler has been part of our conversation. He was the original Landscape Architect of the city. He was born in germany. Kansas,lly entered the missouri area when he was around 19 years old. He was actually born in 1862. That would have been about 1882. He worked on a park called Railroad Park in shawnee, kansas. ,e came to the kansas city side was brought into the design aspect by leaders of the community and started working on the parking boulevard system in kansas city. A lot of his early training and knowledge was with european cities. His family travel. He saw a lot of the great parks systems in europe. He got appreciation for what good Landscape Design was all about. This was also during the beautiful cities movement. He was a leader in that relationship o. N american relationship. People realized they wanted Better Living conditions, modern conveniences. Obviously getting involved in Transportation Systems as far as what was happening. Also roads, bridges, all these things that make for a better city. Clean drinking water, good utilities, all that is part of the importance of a good growing city. Baseerity, building a tax associated with that, plus a beautiful place to be. People were outside a lot. We did not have modern conveniences like airconditioning. They wanted grass, trees, open spaces. The City Beautiful Movement was about appearance and aesthetics asserted as Soon Associated with design. Throughthose were done condemnation early on. We have a subdivision regulation in the city where a developer develops a tract of land, they would dedicate so much land to parkland. Year not unusual for every land to be added to the system. To get to 12,000 acres, it took many years to get to that place. As the city grows, the parking boulevard system rose. As the systems get older, they take a lot of ignorance. You have to rebuild things, whether it is the pavement, curb, drain structure. The original plan was a lot of tree plantings, multiple rows of trees in some of these boulevards. Trees have a life expectancy. We have to remove trees and replant trees. The biggest challenge today is maintenance. I think generally speaking kansas city appreciates the parking boulevard system. We strongly believe that. We would encourage anybody that does appreciate it for what it has because it does not take a lot of travel these days to realize what we have. If you live here, you kind of take it for granted. Our staff recently traveled to kansas city, missouri, to learn about its rich history. Learn more about kansas city and other stops on our tour at cspan. Org citiestour. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Q a, johnon cspans cogan on u. S. Federal entitlement programs. Entitlement programs stem from the basic human desire to help someone who is in need of assistance. That is common. All of us have it in us. For politicians it is a little easier to do with someone elses money. They still have the same basic desire. They also have this desire to be reelected. Once that entitlement is put in place, the game has changed. Interest groups form around protecting data type that entitlement, pressing for more assistance. On u. S. Federal entitlement programs, sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Theay night on after words, director of the manhattan roject, his daughter interviewed. Because of his entire wartime experience, he became convinced that the only way for democracy to survive, the best way to beat be a strongand country was to have a great School System where we showed democracy was better than dictatorships and that we would have sufficiently brilliant people, talented people in government and science. The way to do that was to have the sat, which he helped invent and to have schools with the kinds of leaders and technically advanced people we would need in positions of power if we were going to be a great nation in the hightech world he foresaw approaching in the 1950s and 1960s. He had an extraordinary impact on american life. Cspan2 after words on sunday night. Tv,ext on American History two presentations from in entitledosium enfranchising equality 150 years of the 15th amendment. First, university of kentucky history professor Tracy Campbell talked about the 1942 soldier voting act, which provided absentee voting for soldiers serving in world war ii. Professor campbell looks at states that opposed the legislation and explores their motive. The second talk is given by a the journalist Pulitzer Prize beat,g author of the race director of the Journalism Program at emory university. This symposium is hosted by the university of the south and tennessee. This is about 90 minutes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning again and thank you for joining our second session today. I teach in the History Program here. I also am the director of the project on slavery, race, and reconciliation, the institutions endeavored to not only understand a particular history, but the obligations that that history has had for