On a hot summer evening in 1958, a group of African American students in Wichita, Kansas, quietly entered Dockum's Drug Store and sat down at the whites-only lunch counter. This was the beginning of the first sustained, successful student sit-in of the modern civil rights movement, instigated in violation of the national NAACP's instructions. Based on interviews with over eighty participants and observers of this sit-in, Dissent in Wichita traces the contours of race relations and black activism in an unexpected locus of the civil rights movement, revealing that the movement was a national, not a southern, phenomenon.

Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72

History

Eick, Gretchen Cassel

Americas

University of Illinois Press

On a hot summer evening in 1958, a group of African American students in Wichita, Kansas, quietly entered Dockum's Drug Store and sat down at the whites-only lunch counter. This was the beginning of the first sustained, successful student sit-in of the modern civil rights movement, instigated in violation of the national NAACP's instructions. Based on interviews with over eighty participants and observers of this sit-in, Dissent in Wichita traces the contours of race relations and black activism in an unexpected locus of the civil rights movement, revealing that the movement was a national, not a southern, phenomenon.

In Beginnings, the first issue of 105 Meadowlark Reader, 35 authors representing 25 Kansas communities share true stories, essays about the roots we share, the personal stories of individuals embedded in in the Kansas landscape, stories that examine our lives as Kansans and our communities. Current and former Kansans share their true stories, leaving readers eager for the next installment of 105 Meadowlark Reader. Authors in this issue include: Julie Johnson, Nancy Julien Kopp, Daniel Krause, Sandee Lee, Michael Marks, Don Marler, Ruth Maus, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Julie Nischan, Marci Penner, Jeanette Powers, Jay M. Price, Kevin Rabas, Mark Scheel, Harland Schuster, Julie Sellers, Tyler Robert Sheldon, Lindsey Bartlett, Tim Bascom, Gretchen Cassel Eick, Marie Baum Fletcher, Beth Gulley, Carolyn Hall, Roger Heineken, Alexander Hurla, and Miriam Iwashige. The collection is compiled and edited by Cheryl Unruh, and published by Tracy Million Simmons.

105 Meadowlark Reader: Beginnings

Biographies & Memoirs

Hall, Carolyn

Bascom, Tim

Gulley, Beth

Unruh, Cheryl

Bartlett, Lindsey

Fletcher, Marie Baum

Heineken, Roger

Hurla, Alexander

Iwashige, Miriam

Historical

Meadowlark

When Charles Ohiyesa Eastman, a degreed Dakota physician with an East coast university education, met Elaine Goodale, a teacher and supervisor of education among the Sioux, they were about to witness one of the worst massacres in U.S. history: The Wounded Knee Massacre of unarmed Indians participating in a religious ritual. Their bond began there as they witnessed the horror. It carried them across the U.S. advocating for Native Americans and whistleblowing the corruption and racism of the nation's Indian policy. They wrote 22 books while organizing a national organization of and for Indians that paralleled the NAACP. They lobbied Congress, made speeches, wrote articles and protested the steady erosion of Native rights and resources. Their books, excerpted here, make the history of this very bleak time for Americans of color come alive. This book connects the experiences and responses of Indigenous Americans with those of African Americans and white progressives during the period from the Civil War to World War II. Social and political history combine here to paint vivid pictures of this time. Tensions between the Eastmans mirror the dilemmas of gender, cultural pluralism and ethnic differences that Charles and Elaine faced as they worked to make their homeland care about Indian impoverishment. Their story is a national story. It is also intensely personal. It reveals the price American reformers paid for their activism and the cost exacted for American citizenship. Effectively written, this book will keep you reading and thinking about the connections between their time and ours.

They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans' Story

Community & Culture

University of Nevada Press

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Books by Eick, Gretchen Cassel