The Color of Kansas

Not to worry, this is not a post about the lame ’70s rock group — you can sleep soundly in your beds knowing I’ll never waste time writing about that. Rather, this is the latest in my catch-as-catch series of posts honoring American states, which thus far has included Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (because I’m from there). Why Kansas next? Because it’s National Kansas Day, and its history is more interesting and exciting than its reputation allows.

Unlike the related corn states of Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska, Kansas has genuine romance in its favor. Laugh me to scorn if you will, but I stand by it. If you’ll only chew your food properly for a minute you’ll realize I’m right. Twisters and tent shows! It’s the beginning and the end of America’s favorite homegrown fairy tale (and my favorite movie) The Wizard of Oz, as well as the birthplace of both Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle. The great Americana painter John Steuart Curry, depicter of circuses and carnivals, is from there, as is the beloved clown Emmett Kelly. The peculiar theatrical form known as the Toby Show, which I wrote about here, is a Kansas creation. The hatchet wielding temperance advocate Carrie Nation made her name breaking up Kansas saloons before she tried the vaudeville circuits. Silent movie star Louise Brooks started her life and performing career in Cherryvale — and, at her lowest point, had to return. Barnstorming aviatrix Amelia Earhart was a Kansan.

Granted. Kansas tends to be a place that people ESCAPE from. But among the places that people want to escape, this one has more color to it. And that color is RED. This aspect of Kansas legend is less to be celebrated than sung about soberly…Kansas is famous for True Crime, for murders and robberies.

John Steuart Curry also painted THIS.

As “Bleeding Kansas” the state was born against a backdrop of dozens of murders resulting from conflict between pro-slavery Missouri border ruffians and Free Staters (later known as Jayhawkers) in the lead-up to the Civil War. The fanatical John Brown was a leader among the latter group, many of whom came from Back East. During the war Quantrill’s Raiders massacred hundreds of people in several Kansas towns. Cow towns like Abilene, Wichita, and Dodge City were the sites of notorious gunfights, and the early stomping grounds of lawmen Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok. The James, Dalton, Doolin, and Younger gangs included Kansas among their multi-state maraudings. The luckless aspirant to their ranks Elmer McCurdy spent his final years there — only to travel more widely as a carnival attraction posthumously.

Medical charlatan J.R. Brinkley launched his empire in Milford, Kansas, and started his first radio station KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best) there.

The serial killing spiritualists known as as The Bloody Benders operated out of a prairie homestead near Cherryvale. (Thanks, Henry Bial, for sending this visual. It’s important to honor our historical heroes with plaques! Kiddin’!) Truman Capote’s masterpiece In Cold Blood recounts the Cutter family killings near Holcomb by Perry Smith and Richard Hickok. In more recent times Dennis Rader, known as The BTK Killer committed his unspeakable deeds in the state.

Could there BE any more drama than this? Yet in the 20th century its reputation changed. Formerly associated with the Old West, once America expanded all the way to the Pacific, Kansas became the literal geographic center of the Lower 48. No longer the FAR West, it was now the MID-west. Ike Eisenhower, the ultimate middle-of-the-road President, was our one Chief Executive from the state. Clark Kent, alter ego of the ultimate All-American superhero, is depicted as hailing from the fictional town of Smallville. Native son William Inge wrote great melodramas like Picnic, Bus Stop, andCome Back Little Shebainspired by his home state, stressing conventionality and repression.

Kansas is also famous for being the “driest” of states, not in terms of rainfall, but from the standpoint of alcohol prohibition. But we tend not to think of the colorful Carrie Nation with her speeches and her hatchets in that context. Nor do we think of the gutters running thick with blood, or serial killers. Nowadays, people tend to think of Bob Dole. Now that’s what I call a makeover.

Now, as it happens I got to spend some quality time in the Sunflower State when my first book No Applause came out. A friend was a grad student at the University of Kansas, which is in Lawrence, site of one of Quantrill’s massacres, and the setting for the anti-nuke scare movie The Day After.So I went out there. I got to visit Buster Keaton’s birthplace in Piqua, which is also not far from Elmer McCurdy’s stomping grounds in Iola. And I got to enjoy the hospitality of Henry Bial, professor and chair of the U of K’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and author of the terrific book Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (which I could have sworn I reviewed here but now I can’t find it). The school is very proud of its association with Inge; they have a theatre named after him there. Henry just co-authored an article for Theatre Journal called The Unbearable Whiteness of John Brown: Theatrical Legacies and Performing Abolition that is well worth checking out and available here.

Which conjures another important point. We think of Kansas as a white, white state, but it has also been the birthplace of several important artists of color, including Langston Hughes,Gwendolyn Brooks, Gordon Parks,Lorenzo Fuller, Oscar Micheaux, Hattie McDaniel, and Charlie Parker — which really makes me want to talk about the Kansas City jazz scene, but of course that’s across the border in Missouri….for another day.