Sitting atop a 120-foot bluff, Bothwell Lodge is a castlelike building constructed between 1897 and 1928 for a prominent Sedalia lawyer, John Homer Bothwell. Bothwell's eclectic furnishings, most of which remain today, and informal atmosphere represent his intentions of providing a recreational retreat.
The site offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.
Nestled in the hills above the Loutre River in Montgomery County, Graham Cave State Park features an unusual sandstone cave that contained evidence that rewrote history books. Once used for shelter, Graham Cave became historically significant when archaeologists discovered how long ago human occupancy had occurred. University of Missouri archaeologists uncovered artifacts revealing human use of the cave dating back to as early as 10,000 years ago. Clues to the lifestyle of the ancient Dalton and Archaic period Native Americans were uncovered. Today, visitors are allowed in the entrance of the cave, where interpretive signs point out interesting discoveries.
The park offers exhibits and occasional recreational and educational events.
From the BackStory website:
"Historian Peter Norton speaks with 20th Century History Guy Brian Balogh about how automobile companies in the 1920s managed to re-define streets as a space for cars, rather than pedestrians. And he explains the little-known history of the term 'jaywalker.'"
Did individual African American activists spark the Civil Rights Movement?
Textbooks are silent about defining race and racism, even though the modern Civil Rights Movement and its antecedent movements were efforts to challenge and eliminate racism. Rather than addressing the outrage of systematically being denied basic human rights by the U.S. Supreme Court, while citizens in a democracy, textbooks suggest that individual African Americans were merely sad or angry because individual white people did not want to fight wars, play baseball, learn, ride public transportation or eat lunch with them.
The most important lessons of the modern Civil Rights Movement will not be gained from passively reading textbooks. Examining primary sources will place students closer to the scenes of the modern Civil Rights Movement and its antecedent movements. Too often Dr. King is represented in textbooks as the person who was sent to save African Americans from racism, or the most powerful leader of the modern Civil Rights Movement, or as a political moderate. Instead, he was one of many powerful leaders.
Textbooks define segregation benignly with little reference to the ways in which northern and southern state governments and businesses systematically – and over the course of several decades -- reinforced an ideology of white supremacy through violence. Other groups of people affected by these same laws and practices – including American Indians, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, Native Alaskans, Jews and Arabs – are seldom included in textbook discussions of racism. These absences strip away the underlying motivation for collective anger and social action.
Textbooks present the modern Civil Rights Movement in the same way as other U.S. social movements -- a spontaneous, emotional eruption of saintly activists led by two or three inspired orators in response to momentary aberrations in the exercise of democracy. In particular, textbooks imply that, until World War II, African Americans had been relatively content with social, economic, and political conditions in the U.S. Then, suddenly, African Americans were angered that they could not fight on battlefields, play baseball, attend schools, or sit on buses with whites. Further, African Americans were the only people to observe and protest these conditions. Finally, to act on their discontent, African Americans required instructions from a benevolent federal government, or a single charismatic or sympathetic leader. A more accurate telling of the story of the modern Civil Rights Movement indicates that the “river of purposeful anger” has been long, wide and well populated.
The modern Civil Rights Movement is often marked as beginning with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning school segregation or the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move from a bus seat in Montgomery, AL and ends with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act or with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 (Or, more recently, with the election of President Barack Obama). In some textbooks, the context for this movement are the years following the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case of Plessy V.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, born in 1872 in Dayton, OH, to a former slave and a veteran of the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, was a poet and novelist known for his innovative use of dialect and colorful language, and is widely-recognized as the first African American poet to gain widespread international attention. This website makes available more than 200 of his poems, transcribed, listed alphabetically by title, and keyword searchable.
It also presents a fully browseable collection of more than 10 of his books, ranging in date from Oak and Ivy (1893) through Joggin' Erlong (1906,) and also including Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), which includes the famous "Ode to Ethiopia," for which he gained national recognition. The website also contains the sheet music and transcribed libretto for three songs for which Dunbar wrote the words.
These works are accompanied by a selection of 11 photographs of Dunbar, his friends, and family, as well as 20 images of the covers of his books.
The art of Dox Thrash (1893-1965) is exhibited in more than 60 images—mostly reproductions of his prints, but also including drawings and photographs of the artist at work. Born in Griffin, GA, Thrash spent most of his life in Philadelphia, which he expressively documented in his artworks. The exhibit proceeds along a timeline from birth to death that allows visitors to read a biographical narrative placing his life in appropriate historical context and to view images relevant to each period. Texts and images also can be downloaded in PDF format. Thrash's prints illuminated aspects of African American community life in Philadelphia with scenes of street life, workers, domestic scenes, and leisure activities. Thrash also portrayed scenes drawn from his experience as a soldier in World War I, life on the road, and the lynching of blacks.
In addition to his artistic creations, Thrash invented a new and influential printmaking technique—the carborundum process—in the 1930s as he worked in the WPA Graphic Arts Workshop. The exhibit provides descriptions and images of nine techniques Thrash used, and also includes four audio files of the curator discussing the process of putting the exhibit together. Valuable for students of the history of art and for those interested in expressive depictions of African American life and culture in Philadelphia.
The Society's Museum is housed in the 1885 Poehler home. In the back yard of the house stands a log cabin built by another German immigrant, Christian Didra, about 1858. This log cabin is a dramatic reminder of the harsh living conditions under which the earliest of the Sibley County pioneers existed.
The society offers occasional recreational and education events; the museum offers exhibits.
Located in an historic engine house, the Kansas Firefighters Museum displays vintage firefighting vehicles and equipment.
The museum offers exhibits and research archive access.
The Fort Sisseton State Historical Park includes an 1864 frontier fort and associated structures—including the officers' quarters, stone barracks, powder magazine, and guard house.
The fort offers tours led by costumed interpreters.
The Sica Hollow State Park is located in Lake City, South Dakota, and is the subject of many Indian legends. The Hollow is located in rolling hills created by glaciers over 20,000 years ago.
The park offers guided tours, the "Trail of Spirits" a self-guided nature trail, and interpretive guides who can help bring to life the legends of the Sioux Indians. The website offers visitor information and a brief history of the site.