Communities. In 1856 when this house was built, ritchies idea was to make this house as solid as he possibly could. Its kind of like a fort in that sense. The house has become known as somebodys port, whether you are on one side or another. That will result in ritchies arrest for his involvement in rating stores and he will be arrested and incarcerated in the proslavery jail. And managed to escape in the fall of 1856 and find his way back to franklin, indiana where he spent time with his family, his father and his family in indiana, leaving a wife and children here into bego topeka. When he comes back to topeka in the spring of 1857, the free soil people have gained control of the territorial legislature. They begin to institute, rather than pro slavery legislation, they enact a free soil anti slavery legislation. That pretty well seals the deal that kansas is ultimately going to be a free state rather than a pro slavery state. The result is pretty clear. The free people have become a dominant. And when that happens bleeding kansas turns into a different scenario. That scenario is the people who involved in trying to block the spread of slavery during bleeding kansas now began to operate the underground railroad. Beginning in 1857 what happens is that this house becomes one of the centers where escaping slaves can find refuge and gain assistance to be transported to nebraska and into iowa and turned over to abdomen listitions in iowa where they would be helped to go to canada where they will ultimately find themselves free. So the underground railroad becomes a less violent manifestation of bleeding kansas, though the same people are involved. These are examples of the same people that were involved in trying to weaken the fabric of slavery in missouri by helping runaways succeed. We have an active underground Railroad Operation from 1957, 58 59, and so on that this house plays a role in that. You have people like the ritchies who come to kansas because they see kansas as an opportunity to create a new society from the ground up. In that sense, it will be opportunity for themselves and opportunity for them to shape the institutions in a way that will conform to what they believe to be their value system. One of the things that richie will do is he will be very committed to not only position and temperance and womens rights and africanamerican rights, but he will also be interested in education. And he will be the instrumental in attracting and founding Washington University to be an institution that is a part of this community. So that the idea that we are going to have an educated citizenry, an inclusive citizenry, is an improvement over what we had east of the Missouri River and the established societies at the time. And that this in kansas, is a Fertile Ground for a new america. We tell the story to visitors, principally our Heritage Education program which we deal with middle schoolers and Elementary Education schools where we talk about the underground railroad and we connect the activities that this house represents because it was a station on the underground railroad. We tell the richies story and kids can identify with it. They also go five blocks to the south and they go to the Monroe School and talk about the issues that lead to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. You have freedom issues of the 1850s here and then we talk about the freedom issues of the 1950s that think talk about at the Monroe School. Kids can begin to understand that something really important about america transexpires right here at topeka. There is items from a lot of different collections that we have, but they all concern the fight in kansas in the 1920s against the ku klux klan. Kansas was actually the only state in the United States that managed to legally oust the kkk from operating in the state of kansas. These are items that illustrate different parts of what was a legal case against the klan. Starting out, we have a picture of governor allen. He was a newspaper man. Newspaper men then at that time, were very powerful people. They often, also, moved into political office. Henry allen owned one of the biggest newspapers in the state. He was by trade a journalist. In 1916 he ran for governor of kansas. He didnt win that year, but he ran again in 1918. That year he did win. He won reelection in 1920. That was when our governors served twoyear terms, not fouryear terms. Another man, William Allen white, he was a colleague and french of henry allens and he owned the the emporium gazette newspaper. He was famous for his colorful editorials. Henry allen william, allen white were very important figures in the case against the klan. The american guardsman was the newsletter published by the topeka ku klux klan chapter. We only have this one issue so this is all we have to go on. I wanted to read a few excerpts where they explain their stance against immigration. This is one of the issues they used to recruit members in kansas. They talked about the immigrants after world war i, far from being the anglosaxon or scandinavian types of 50 years ago in search of home, god, and freedom and whose sons and daughter res today loyal and patriotic americans, they are mostly the scum of the mediterranean and middle european countries. Italian anarchist, Irish Catholics malcontents, russian jews, lithuanians, and austrians of the lowest class compose the current level of invaders. They have the loyalty to the land of their birth. They speak their own languages. They preach their own religions, mostly Roman Catholic or jewish and reader on newspapers. They some of by saying america cannot become a polyglot country and survive. The immigration issue was one of the topics that the klan seized on in order to recruit people at that time. It is a little surprising that one of the places where they had most success was in supporting the labor unions. In july 1922, the Railroad Shop workers went on strike throughout the country. The klan saw that as an opportunity to recruit new members and jumped in on the side of the union, which is a little surprising considering the things they say about the working class. But one of the periods about that is that the laish union did not include a lot of the mexican workers at that time. A lot of the black and mexican workers did not go out on strike when the union went on strike. That made it a racial issue. The klan jumped in on the side of the labor union and began to plan events supporting the strike. Particularly in kansas city. That was one of the strongest chapters in the state. This is when henry allen really got involved in fighting with the klan. We like to have official governments from governor fallin document in these things. In reality, sometimes the only way to document a speech that was given is to look at the newspaper account. Someone would sit there and try to record the speech if they were getting it. They would be quoted in the paper the next day. Here, this particular issue whats very heavily about governor alans speech that he gave down and coffeyville about kkk territory. Saying that he is going to drive the ku klux klan from the state
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