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Event Video

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  • University of Kansas historian Shawn Leigh Alexander looks at the forgotten men and women who in the late 19th century took up the cause of civil rights for African Americans.
    Shawn Leigh Alexander - An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP
    Tuesday, March 6, 2012
    Central Library

    Historian Shawn Leigh Alexander looks at the forgotten men and women who in the late 19th century took up the cause of civil rights for African Americans. Creating groups such as the Afro-American League, the Afro-American Council, the Niagara Movement, the Constitution League, and the Committee of Twelve, these pioneers developed the methodology of boycotts, propaganda, lobbying, and moral suasion that would bear fruit only long after they had passed on.

    Alexander is an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas.

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  • Meet the Past with Crosby Kemper III returns for a conversation with Edgar Snow, as portrayed by actor Robert Gibby Brand, on the Lyric Opera set for Nixon in China.
    Meet the Past: Edgar Snow
    Thursday, March 1, 2012

    Meet the Past with Crosby Kemper III returns for a conversation with Edgar Snow, as portrayed by actor Robert Gibby Brand, on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 7 p.m. on the Lyric Opera set for Nixon in China in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

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  • Historian Amity Shlaes finds hopeful lessons in the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, who left office with a smaller federal budget than when he came in.
    Amity Shlaes - Calvin Coolidge: The President Who Said “No”
    Wednesday, February 29, 2012
    Central Library

    President Calvin Coolidge gets a bad rap, says author Amity Shlaes, who notes that under his leadership the economy grew at a rate of four percent annually, taxation was low, and the budget was balanced.

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  • Rebecca Solnit offers a guided tour of the Bay Area through her latest book, Infinite City, which reinvents the traditional atlas, expanding it from a mere collection of maps to a vibrant depiction of a city’s inner life.
    Rebecca Solnit - Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
    Tuesday, February 28, 2012
    Central Library

    Rebecca Solnit offers a guided tour of the Bay Area through her latest book, Infinite City, which reinvents the traditional atlas, expanding it from a mere collection of maps to a vibrant depiction of a city’s inner life.

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  • Historian Bud Bowie looks at how Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ miscalculations doomed the South economically even as it was winning on the battlefield.
    Bud Bowie: Jefferson Davis and His Cause
    Wednesday, February 22, 2012
    Central Library

    Historian Bud Bowie looks at economic miscalculations by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other Southerners that in effect doomed their cause even as it was winning on the battlefield.

    Foremost among these was the belief that the North would never risk ruining the immensely important cotton trade by waging war on secessionist states.

    Bowie is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

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  • Kansas City Star sports reporter Blair Kerkhoff discusses the history of the NAIA basketball tournament in Kansas City and explains why it was instrumental in the demolition of racial barriers in college athletics.
    Blair Kerkhoff: NAIA Basketball & the Civil Rights Movement
    Sunday, February 19, 2012
    Central Library

    Kansas City Star sports reporter Blair Kerkhoff explains why the NAIA basketball tournament in Kansas City was instrumental in the demolition of racial barriers in college athletics.

    Long before the NCAA and NIT tournaments accepted them, college basketball teams from historically black colleges and universities found a home in Kansas City. The basketball tournament of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics was a fixture on the city’s sports calendar; but to African Americans around the country, it meant something special.

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  • In his new memoir playwright/novelist/poet Zakes Mda recalls his coming of age under South African apartheid and his love of jazz, comic books, political discourse and writing.
    Zakes Mda: Sometimes There Is A Void
    Thursday, February 16, 2012
    Central Library

    In his memoir Sometimes There Is A Void award-winning South African author Zakes Mda chronicles his youth from boyhood in Soweto to his exile and coming of age in Basutoland (now Lesotho).

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  • Just in time for Valentine’s Day: UMKC’s Jennifer Phegley provides insights into Victorian “dating” and wedding practices that continue to be embraced by modern brides and grooms…and asks if the Victorians’ ideas about romantic have left us with unhealthy expectations.
    Jennifer Phegley - Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England
    Thursday, February 9, 2012
    Central Library

    Jennifer Phegley, chair of the Department of English at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, examines how many of our modern marriage traditions – including wedding dresses and honeymoons – have their roots in the Victorian era.

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  • Randy Roberts - A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game that Rallied a Nation
    Thursday, February 2, 2012
    Central Library

    Purdue University historian Randy Roberts discusses the iconic 1944 football game between the undefeated cadets of West Point and the midshipmen of Annapolis.

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  • University of Pennsylvania historian Stephanie McCurry contends the South sowed the seeds of its demise in creating a regime that excluded white women and slaves, which together comprised a majority of the population.
    Stephanie McCurry: Confederate Reckoning
    Thursday, January 26, 2012
    Plaza Branch

    University of Pennsylvania historian Stephanie McCurry offers a new interpretation of the Confederacy that contends the South sowed the seeds of its demise in creating a regime that excluded white women and slaves, which together comprised a majority of the population.

    Confederate Reckoning was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History. McCurry’s talk is the keynote address for the Richard D. McKinzie Research Symposium.

    Co-sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Department of History.

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