The State Historical Society of Missouri

William F. Berry, Independent Scholar, Columbia

Everyday Life in Civil War Missouri

The Civil War had an enormous impact on Missouri’s civilian population who lived under martial law. Learn more about conditions in Civil War Missouri through the letters of those experiencing the ordeal and through stories of individual soldiers’ lives.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Lawrence O. Christensen, Professor Emeritus, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla

African American Civil Rights in Post–Civil War Missouri

After the end of slavery, African Americans struggled to achieve equal rights in Missouri. Their efforts in education, politics, employment, and transportation led to varying results but were marked by hard work, persistence, and courage.

Special needs for presentation: podium

Carr W. Pritchett and the Civil War Era in Howard County

Carr W. Pritchett, born in Virginia and reared in Missouri, taught in various places before establishing Pritchett School Institute in Glasgow, Missouri, in 1866. Mostly self-educated, Pritchett was also for some years the most significant astronomer in the state. Pritchett School Institute, later Pritchett College, typified a major form of educational institution in nineteenth-century Missouri.

Special needs for presentation: podium

Gladys Coggswell, Master Storyteller of Missouri, Frankford

Stories from the Heart

Through this presentation, the speaker will share extraordinary stories from ordinary people with determination. These stories will bring to life people with uncommon courage, strength, will and wit as they offer insight into African American experiences throughout the state’s history.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Thomas F. Curran, Cor Jesu Academy, St. Louis

The Confederate Women and the Civil War Military Justice System in the St. Louis Area

During the Civil War, hundreds of Confederate–sympathizing women passed through the hands of the military justice system as prisoners of war in and around St. Louis. Those deemed guilty of the most serious infractions were confined to the nearby Alton prison, the former Illinois state penitentiary, for their part in assisting the Confederate war effort. The women imprisoned in Alton came from states primarily along the Mississippi River, especially Missouri, and each spent many months in custody. This presentation focuses on those women and their experiences.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Carol Diaz-Granados, Research Associate and Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis

Native American Art, Symbol, and Meaning

This slide program covers a broad range of Native American arts, both prehistoric and historic. Numerous objects of American Indian art will be viewed. These art objects are studied for the information they can provide about the lifestyles, beliefs, religion, and rituals of the people who created them. Emphasis is on how information is derived from material culture and how the meaning encoded into these artifacts is used to define individual or group identity, control of power, and particularly the creators’ view of the cosmos.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint projector, screen, and lighted podium, if possible

Missouri’s Ancient Rock Art

Missouri’s caves, shelters, and rock outcrops still display traces of the beliefs and stories of prehistoric American Indians. The presenter has documented over one hundred prehistoric carvings (petroglyphs) and paintings (pictographs) left by Missouri’s earliest American Indian populations. She will share her interpretations of these enigmatic designs, which include human figures, animals, geometric and abstract designs, as well as records of celestial phenomena.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint projector, screen, and lighted podium, if possible.

Jim Duncan, Historian, Educator, and Past Director of the Missouri State Museum

The Majesty of the Osage

This presentation discusses the early migration of the Osage people and how the structure of their clan system reflects their view of the cosmos. Their fascinating origin myths are explored in relationship to the environment, subsistence, procreation, and the artifact record. Audience members will learn how these proud, independent people, forced to move from their homeland beginning in the 1820s, have managed to surmount the hardships of forced acculturation to retain their identity.

Special needs for presentation: Powerpoint projector and screen

The Indians and Archaeology of Missouri

The presenter covers Missouri’s archaeological record and how it reflects the populations from the state’s prehistoric past. Missouri’s incredible archaeological resources are in large part due to two of the largest confluences in North America. This confluence region and the natural resources of Missouri drew populations going back at least 13,000 years. Through slides, the presenter will show examples of American Indian artifacts found in the state and discuss their significance and what they reveal about Missouri’s American Indian populations.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint projector, screen, small table to display artifacts

Gerald Early, Professor, Department of English at Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Baseball as American Culture

An account of how baseball has influenced American culture and how American social and political history has influenced baseball. Set against the background of my work as a consultant for Ken Burns's Baseball documentary, I will discuss some of the changes in rules and league structure that have taken place in baseball since the turn of the 20th century and relate this to changes taking place in American society at large.

Special needs for presentation:none

The Rise of Jazz Music in the United States Between 1920 and 1960

An account of the origins of jazz, the factors that led to its success as artistic expression and as a taste culture, and the demise of jazz as popular music after World War II. Set against the background of my work as a consultant for Ken Burns's Jazz documentary, I will discuss the issues of race and gender as they relate to jazz, how jazz influenced other art forms, how "sectarianism" both energized and undermined jazz as an artistic force, and what happened when jazz became a listening music instead of a dance music.

Special needs for presentation: none

Sharon Kinney Hanson, B.A., M.Ed., author, editor, Columbia

The Life of an Olympic Champion

Considering the lack of sports programs for females and the relentless social stigma attached to women athletes, what might compel a teenage girl to think she can compete in a boy’s sport—and win? Gumption, that’s what. Callaway County’s Helen Stephens (1918-1994) had gumption, tenacity, intelligence, and natural, God-given talent. She won two Olympic gold medals in track and field in Berlin in 1936 and became the first woman to own and captain a women’s basketball team. Stephens was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame of the USA and the National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. In her senior years, she competed in the National Senior Games and Show Me State Games and won gold medals every year. The full story of how she was able to step into the limelight and stay there, achieving international fame, is presented by her authorized biographer.

Special needs for presentation: Table to display photographs, or if desired, Macintosh projector and screen for Pages or Keynote software.

Gary R. Kremer, Executive Director, The State Historical Society of Missouri

George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol

While this program will address the major career accomplishments of the Missouri-born scientist George Washington Carver, it will also draw attention to little known aspects of his life, including his aspiration to be an artist, his spirituality, his work on behalf of conservation and improved race relations, and his efforts to treat the symptoms of polio.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint Projector, screen and podium

“Strangers to Domestic Virtue”: Women and Crime in Missouri History

The title of this program is drawn from an early 19th century prison matron’s effort to explain why women in Missouri committed crimes: they were “strangers to domestic virtue.” The program will focus on efforts to deal with female felons in Missouri history, with emphasis on the early 19th century through the era of World War I.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Virginia J. Laas, Professor Emeritus, Missouri Southern State University

Mrs. Blair Goes to Washington: A Missouri Woman on the National Scene, 1922-1935

In 1922, just two years after the passage of the 19th amendment, Emily Newell Blair became the first fully equal Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This talk explores her rise from local suffrage activism in Carthage, Missouri, to national politics in the 1920s and the New Deal.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint projector

“No Age of Barbarism can show us such scenes of cruelty and plunder”: Women and Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri

Guerrilla warfare dominated the lives of many women in southwestern Missouri during the Civil War. Using county records and Provost Marshal evidence, this talk examines how women survived the chaos that resulted when undisciplined bands of marauding men roamed their countryside.

Special needs for presentation: PowerPoint projector

Dr. Debra Miles, Independent Scholar, New Bloomfield

The Road to Brown v. Board of Education: Legal Cases Along the Way in Missouri

Charles Hamilton Houston, a noted African American attorney in Washington, DC, developed the legal strategy to end segregation in public education that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision declaring separate schools unconstitutional. The presentation will emphasize the usage of Houston’s strategy in Missouri courts with two Missouri plaintiffs, Lloyd Gaines and Loucile Bluford.

Special needs for presentation: none

Separate and Unequal: Missouri’s Black Public Medical Facilities

Just as there were separate schools for black and white children, there were also separate medical facilities for the races. In Missouri, the desire for health care facilities where blacks would receive medical care and training in a respectful and dignified environment led to the creation of Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis and Kansas City General Hospital Number 2 in Kansas City. In addition to presenting the history of the two hospitals, Dr. Miles will also discuss the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education on these medical facilities.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Frank Nickell, Department of History, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau

It is Very Plain: Missourians are Funny People

This is a presentation about the character and nature of Missourians. Dr. Nickell asserts that making a living in Missouri is difficult and that life in the Show-Me State is often harsh. Missourians, he believes, respond to these realities with a sense of humor. Nickell contends that Missourians laugh a lot, often at themselves, and that laughter and humor enable hardworking farmers, miners, and woodsmen to accept the backbreaking labor that confronts them on a daily basis. He draws his title from President Harry Truman’s autobiography, Plain Speaking, and uses stories from family histories, oral interviews, court records, and published histories to illustrate his point.

Special needs for presentation: none

Steve Otto, Storyteller, Kansas City

The Day the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Just 200 years ago, during the winter of 1811-1812, the New Madrid fault line exploded with a fury never felt before, or since, in a region that included what is now eastern Missouri. Three great earthquakes, each with a magnitude exceeding 8 on the Richter scale were recorded and—along with fifteen of the largest aftershocks—felt as far away as Washington DC, over 750 miles from the quake zone. What was it like for the people living and working on this part of the American frontier at that time? Hear personal stories of individuals who experienced this harrowing event and whose lives were forever changed by it.

Special needs for presentation: none

The Tales of the Ozarks

In the days before radio and television, the people of the Ozarks entertained each other by telling and re-telling traditional stories. Folklorist and storyteller Steve Otto has worked to collect these tales, many of which can be traced back through well-established traditions rooted in Appalachia and Ireland. Discover the humor of the tall tales and follow the exploits of wondrous characters born in the imaginations of generations of storytellers who migrated from the Old World and went on through the Appalachian Mountains to eventually settle in the Missouri Ozarks.

Special needs for presentation: none

Dr. Joel Rhodes, Department of History, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau

The Father of Southeast Missouri: The Life and Times of Louis Houck

Lawyer, journalist, entrepreneur, college regent, philanthropist, and historian Louis Houck became a self–taught railroad builder in the late nineteenth century. His railroads provided the major impetus for southeast Missouri’s population, agricultural, lumbering, and commercial growth. Houck also strove to make art, culture, and formal education available to all social classes in the region.

Special needs for presentation: none

Jeffrey Smith, Professor of History, Chair of History & Geography Department, and editor of The Confluence (an interdisciplinary regional studies journal, Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri)

“Temples of Democracy”: Carnegie Libraries in Missouri

In 1889 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie vowed to give away his fortune—a tall order for the world’s first billionaire. Part of his philanthropy included funding almost 1,700 public libraries in the United States, including some three dozen in Missouri. Carnegie called free public libraries “temples of democracy” because he saw them as agents for self-improvement and advancing democratic society. This program will examine Carnegie’s legacy in libraries in the Show-Me State.

Special needs for presentation: none

Remember Me, and Here’s Why: Cemetery Memorials and Community Memory

Cemeteries are more than just burial grounds. They are also documents of the ways we see ourselves and the ways people wanted to be remembered. This illustrated talk will use St. Louis’s Bellefontaine Cemetery as an example of the ways tombstones, mausoleums, and cemetery design reflect the attitudes and values of Gilded Age Missouri.

Special needs for presentation: Powerpoint projector and screen

Dr. Joan Stack, Curator of Art Collections, The State Historical Society of Missouri

Picturing a State Divided: George Caleb Bingham and the American Civil War

George Caleb Bingham’s monumental painting General Order No. 11, now housed at the State Historical Society of Missouri, is arguably one of the most important American history paintings to record a scene from the Civil War. A rare “artist/politician,” Bingham publicly engaged in debates on slavery and secession from the 1840s to the 1870s. His words and images from this period provide insight into the complexities of these issues in Missouri. Bingham was personally acquainted with many of the major players in the state’s divided government, and this presentation examines the dramatic story of the war as Bingham lived it. From the political divisions that led Missouri to have two rival wartime governors, to the chaotic and dangerous guerrilla fighting that terrorized the state, Bingham was a witness and participant in the struggle.

Special needs for presentation: laptop computer, PowerPoint projector, screen

Visualizing Tom Sawyer in the Twentieth Century: Thomas Hart Benton Illustrates Mark Twain

In the 1930s and 1940s, the prestigious publishing house Limited Editions Club asked Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton to create a new set of illustrations for upcoming editions of Mark Twain’s classics, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,and Life on the Mississippi. A celebrated Regionalist who rejected nonrepresentational art, Benton created an innovative modern approach for his illustrations that translated Twain’s vernacular prose into a twentieth-century visual style. Benton's deceptively simple gestural illustrations (now housed at the State Historical Society of Missouri) capture the humor and ease of Twain’s text while reflecting a variety of influences, from Henri Matisse to newspaper comics.

Special needs for presentation: laptop computer, PowerPoint projector, screen

Henry Sweets, Curator, Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, Hannibal

Mark Twain’s Origins

This program focuses on a description of Hannibal, Missouri, from approximately 1819 to 1860.  The presenter looks at notable events and developments in Hannibal during that period, with special attention to industrial and commercial growth, education, and the social and cultural forces and events that influenced Sam Clemens.

Special needs for presentation:  PowerPoint projector and screen

Mark Twain’s Relevance Today

This program begins with a look at Mark Twain’s life and then moves into an assessment of Twain’s writings and why they continue to be relevant today.

Special needs for presentation:  PowerPoint projector and screen