stodgy, Craig Miner's accessible and interesting new
book, Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State
1854-2000, appeals to a general audience, as well as
to history students and professors.
Craig Miner ’66/67, Wichita State’s Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, has written books about Kansas before, but nothing quite like this. His latest publication, Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State 1854-2000, is the first new state history book to be published in more than 25 years and, as its dust jacket notes, is the most thoroughly researched ever.
The result? Bushel loads of interesting material. In fact, Miner says, one of the more difficult aspects of writing the book was determining what information would be included. “It came down to having an eye, based on having looked at a great deal [of information]. What is discussed in this book had to be worth stopping on and developing.”
Among his sources were old Kansas newspapers. Prior to 1935, the state had approximately 4,000 papers — the most in the nation. And luckily for Miner, the Kansas State Historical Society has kept meticulous, well-organized clippings. “That was the key,” says Miner. “And they were also grouped by subject — drinking, roads, women’s suffrage. I wanted to investigate pivotal moments in Kansas history and culture.”
A distinguishing factor of Kansas is the inclusion of late 20th century history, something that is rare, Miner explains, “because of the lack of secondary sources.” The book examines such moments of historical import as the 1979 construction of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant, the Prairie Park public land vs. private ownership issue involving the Flint Hills and the 1999 Kansas State Board of Education decision to “downgrade” the importance of teaching evolution.
Kansans, it seems, have rarely shied away from controversy. “There were dark sides to the way Kansas was in the past,” Miner says. “But, from prohibition — which we faced head-on — to capital punishment, to women’s suffrage — which had a very early history in Kansas — [Kansans] felt [they] knew what a better world was.”
Another example comes from movie history, which has a unique record in Kansas. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 controversial epic The Birth of a Nation remained banned in the state until 1924, which Miner notes is a “high point for race relations in the 1920s.” On the lighter side, the all-female, three-member State Board of Review, which was responsible for censoring films to make them appropriate for viewing audiences, edited the film, Bathing Beauties and Big Boobs. The board edited not the title, but a scene in which a man has his pants pulled off by a fish.
“They understood the power of film,” Miner says with a laugh. “More importantly, they didn’t accept there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do about it. That,” he says with pride, “was typical Kansas.”
— Kerry Jones ’00
