At The Kansas African American Museum

I prepared and scheduled this post late last Thursday night.  In light of what happened over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, this post takes on a very different feel as I read over it.  For those of you who live in countries other than the U.S., the town of Charlottesville was overrun with white supremacist and counter demonstrators engaged in open hand to hand combat for what some believed seemed like hours.  According to The Huffington Post:

The sounds of screams had mixed with the sounds of people coughing, their lungs full of mace. Tear gas canisters and rocks and full water bottles and bags of feces flew through the air. Blood stained the sidewalk.

The ugliness on display in Charlottesville should not surprise me, but unfortunately, it does.  If only we as human beings could respect both ourselves and others as we expect others to respect and treat us in turn.  I'm more than willing to listen to white supremacists, the avenging leftists, and the 3 per-centers spew their crap, because, as Americans, they have just as much right to express their views as I, but I won't stand for, or advocate violence.  So for now, I'm still going to show this post and hope no one firebombs my door or finds a way to put a virus on my computer.

We are headed to The Kansas African American Museum.  Please remember the links no longer open in a new window, so if you want to see the museum and return to this page, right click on the link.


Today I will share photos I took

back in early June.

I took this photo just outside the steps of the museum.  You can see the steps on the right.

The church, which is now the museum, is on the National Register of Historic Places.  It may be similar to the British National Trust, but I'm not sure.

The museum is primarily devoted to Black History.  However, this day, I was there to see a lecture on the similarities of Dwight David ("Ike") Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and Barack ("Barry") Hussein Obama II, the 44th president of the United States.

After the lecture, I decided to take some photos, but everyone was reading the information.

I got very discouraged and headed to another room where I checked out the relics and African art on display.  I will share that tomorrow.  There were so many of these huge "billboards" (for lack of a better word), I apparently overlooked this one after I returned.  It showed information about Obama's mother before she and Obama's father were married.

The material they collected on both his mother and Obama was astounding.

However the focus of the lecture was on how similar a Republican (Conservative) president (Eisenhower) and a Democrat (Liberal) president (Obama) were so similar.  First, there was the Kansas connection.  As you can see, Obama's mother was born in Kansas and Eisenhower spent his childhood in Kansas.   Eisenhower's Presidential Library is also in Kansas.

Then there were other similarities, like how Eisenhower was responsible for starting NASA and how in 2010, Obama committed to increasing NASA funding by $6 billion (USD) over five years and completing the design of a new heavy-lift launch vehicle that begin construction that same year.  In response to concerns over job losses, Obama promised $40 million (USD) to help workers affected by the cancellation of the Space Shuttle program and Constellation program.

But possibly where the two were most comparable was that Eisenhower created the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which was a voting rights act.  Had it not been passed, Obama may never have been elected president, or even won the primary.

This carnival used to be a big deal in El Dorado, (a town 20 miles east of Wichita).  Kafir Corn was synonymous with a sorghum product.   

Obama's great aunt was one of the "fair maids."  However, it fell out of favor because of the negative connotations involved, as well as the fact that Kansas began growing wheat instead of sorghum, which is now grown mostly in southeast Kansas.  The sorghum is shown behind the faces of the queen and her maids.

I'll let you peruse the remainder of the photos at your discretion.  If Obama interests you, feel free to read about his early life onward.  Unfortunately, I missed a LOT of the information because there was so much to see and read.









































Here was where I returned to the now thinning crowd to try to see more of Obama's life.  I know I missed a lot of his early life and heritage.





























This tells about the time Obama went to Africa and what little he knew about his father shown in the the photos on the left.









By now, the museum was preparing to close and I was trying to finally get a photo of the Kansas connection when a woman stepped right in front of me.  I couldn't win, so gave up trying.

Before I left, I managed to get a picture of one of the beautiful stained glass windows that surround the building.

Thanks for joining me as we learned a bit about the previous President of the United States and how, although their political parties were different, the two men (Eisenhower and Obama) were alike in many ways, and that included their Kansas connection.