Episode 8: Public History in Kansas City and Beyond - Sandra Enriquez (Going to Kansas City, Part 1)

With this year's Missouri Conference on History coming up in March, many scholars will soon be going to Kansas City. To help prepare for the conference, the Our Missouri Podcast invites listeners to explore the City of Fountains from the confluence of two mighty rivers near the downtown skyline to the Plaza, the Paseo, and the intersection of 18th and Vine. This five-part series entitled "Going to Kansas City" focuses on several projects and institutions that document and define Kansas City's history and identity. This episode features Sandra Enriquez discussing several of the public history projects she has been involved with in her career, particularly the Latinx KC Oral History Project.

About the Guest: Sandra Enriquez is an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Houston. In addition to serving as the director of the Latinx KC Oral History Project, she also supervises the public history internship program at UMKC. Before moving to Missouri, she was affiliated with several public history projects in Texas, including the Gulf Coast Food Project and the Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral History Project.

As the calendar turns from 2018 to 2019, we are one year closer to Missouri's bicentennial in 2021. Since 2013, several state-wide organizations, including the State Historical Society of Missouri, have been tasked with the opportunity to develop and promote events related to this special occasion. This episode features Michael Sweeney talking about his travels throughout the state as the bicentennial coordinator for the State Historical Society of Missouri. Michael also explains how the hard work put in by members of the Bicentennial Alliance and other local organizations has produced a multi-faceted series of programs and events to celebrate Missouri's 200th birthday.

About the Guest:  Michael Sweeney holds a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Kansas. Prior to rejoining the State Historical Society of Missouri as the bicentennial coordinator in 2017, he served as the director of collections at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.  Michael has written for the Jackson County Historical Society Journal, and his most recent article, "Fateful Bargain: Race, Money, and Politics in the Origins and Development of Kansas City's Paseo YMCA," appeared in the April 2018 edition of the Missouri Historical Review.

The end of the year is upon us, and it is once again time to load up the car and head out to various parties and events to mark the season. And yet, between watching sports on TV, passing the plate for one more helping of your favorite dish, and awkwardly trying to avoid uncomfortable small talk, don't let the time pass without utilizing this moment with loved ones to finally record information on your family tree. This episode features Bill Eddleman, associate director of the State Historical Society of Missouri's Cape Girardeau Research Center and current president of the Missouri State Genealogical Association, talking about some best practices to consider when researching family and community history. In this "how-to" guide to genealogy, Eddleman explains how genealogists, from novices to seasoned veterans, can navigate the records available in libraries, archives, and online.

 

About the Guest:  William R. Eddleman earned a PhD in Biology from Oklahoma State University. Eddleman served as a professor in the Department of Biology at Southeast Missouri State University from 1995-2014. He served as vice provost and dean of the School of Graduate Studies from 2011-2013 before being appointed as the provost of Southeast Missouri State University.  After retiring as provost in 2016, Eddleman became the associate director of the State Historical Society of Missouri's Cape Girardeau Research Center. Presently, he is the president of the Missouri State Genealogical Association.

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns on the battlefield fell silent to mark the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. Yet, for all the hope of peace and a return to normalcy, this First World War, as it would later be called, merely marked the opening act of a century dominated by global conflict. As we come upon the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Our Missouri Podcast is launching a three part series on "Missouri and The Great War." Each episode in this series will focus on different aspects of the war ranging from soldiers and civilians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to how the conflict has been remembered in memory and monuments. This episode features Petra DeWitt sharing insights from her book, Degrees of Allegiance: Harassment and Loyalty in Missouri's Germany-American Community during World War I. In her book, DeWitt explains how the patriotism and hysteria of World War I impacted Missouri as well as its substantial German-American community.

About the Guest: Petra DeWitt is an assistant professor of history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Missouri–Columbia. Her 2012 book, Degrees of Allegiance: Harassment and Loyalty in Missouri's Germany-American Community during World War I, won the State Historical Society’s Missouri Book Award. Recently, her article, "Heroines on the Home Front: World War I and the Council of National Defense's Woman's Committee, Missouri Division," appeared in the April 2018 edition of the Missouri Historical Review.

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns on the battlefield fell silent to mark the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. Yet, for all the hope of peace and a return to normalcy, this First World War, as it would later be called, merely marked the opening act of a century dominated by global conflict. As we come upon the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Our Missouri Podcast is launching a three part series on "Missouri and The Great War." Each episode in this series will focus on different aspects of the war ranging from soldiers and civilians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to how the conflict has been remembered in memory and monuments. In this episode, Jonathan Casey, director of the archives and Edward Jones Research Center at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, offers tips on how researchers can find relevant documents related to the war and explains how the museum prepared for the World War I centennial.

About the Guest: Jonathan Casey serves as the director of the archives and Edward Jones Research Center at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from the College of William and Mary and a master's degree in museum studies from the University of Kansas. In addition to managing the museum's collection of over 100,000 items, Casey has also traveled to several World War I sites in the United States and Europe to give programs on the war's lasting impact.

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns on the battlefield fell silent to mark the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. Yet, for all the hope of peace and a return to normalcy, this First World War, as it would later be called, merely marked the opening act of a century dominated by global conflict. As we come upon the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Our Missouri Podcast is launching a three part series on "Missouri and The Great War." Each episode in this series will focus on different aspects of the war ranging from soldiers and civilians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to how the conflict remembered in memory and monuments. This episode features Andrew J. Huebner discussing his recent book, Love and Death in the Great War. In his book, Huebner documents how people throughout the United States found meaning in World War I from the trenches to the home front.

About the Guest: Andrew J. Huebner is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. He holds a PhD in History from Brown University. He is the author of The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. Presently, he is a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Huebner’s most recent book, Love and Death in the Great War, was published in 2018 and includes SHSMO collections.

In 1935, Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, was at a crossroads in her life. Financially, she had weathered the low points of the Great Depression but still found herself on unstable ground after orchestrating the construction of a new building called the Rock House on her family's Mansfield property. Personally, the relationship between Rose and her mother had grown especially strained. In this More Missouri Moments mini-episode of the Our Missouri Podcast, Caroline Fraser, our guest from "Episode 2: Prairie Fires," takes us to the summer of 1935 when Rose Wilder Lane moved into the Tiger Hotel in Columbia and began work on what would become an unsuccessful book project about Missouri history.

Once upon a time, sixty years ago (now nearly 150 years ago), a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.  With that opening scene, Laura Ingalls Wilder launched the Little House book series that eventually became a key piece of American culture. But, did you know, that despite her stories of little houses on the prairies of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory, Laura Ingalls Wilder actually spent a majority of her life in the tiny town of Mansfield, Missouri?  This episode features Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser talking to us about her recent book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In her award-winning book, Fraser provides a stunning account of the events that not only shaped Laura Ingalls Wilder's life but also inspired her later literary masterpieces.

About the Guest: Caroline Fraser holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard University. She is the author of God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church and Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution. Additionally, she served as editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Outside Magazine, among others. Her most recent book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, Plutarch Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

On February 5, 1911, a storm blew in to Jefferson City, Missouri, that most residents alive at the time would never forget. As the storm raged, a bolt of lightning struck the dome of the Missouri State Capitol building. By morning, despite the brave efforts of residents to save the structure and its contents, the fire-ravaged ruins of the capitol were all that remained. In this More Missouri Moments mini-episode of the Our Missouri Podcast, Bob Priddy, our guest from "Episode 1: The Art of the Missouri Capitol," takes us back to that fateful night and explains just how close Jefferson City came to losing its state capital status both before and after the February storm.

Current visitors to the Missouri State Capitol Building in Jefferson City will notice large sections of the facility blocked off due to an ongoing construction project to update and maintain the more than 100-year-old structure. While its exterior grandeur might be presently obscured by scaffolding, this episode's guest, Bob Priddy, takes us to all corners of the historic structure in a discussion of his book The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone, co-authored by Jeffrey Ball. In their book, Priddy and Ball provide an expansive overview of the present Missouri State Capitol building from the destruction of its predecessor by lightning in 1911 to the contemporary efforts to preserve its pristine existence along the banks of the Missouri River. Along the way, the authors offer the reader a well-researched story of the capitol’s construction adjoined by stunning photographs that document the building’s rich history. About the Guest: If you have listened to Missourinet over the last 40+ years, you will certainly recognize Bob Priddy's voice. For his substantial career in radio journalism, Priddy was inducted into the Missouri Broadcaster's Association Hall of Fame in 2018. He is also a noted author with several books to his credit including Only the Rivers are Peacefuland Across Our Wide Missouri. Since 2016, Priddy has served as the president of State Historical Society of Missouri’s Board of Trustees, and he has served as a volunteer leader of the organization since 1985.