Mini Wheat State Tour heads east, meets KC Mayor Quinton Lucas
LAWRENCE — Twenty-five University of Kansas faculty and staff spent a day exploring regional history and culture as part of the Mini Wheat State Tour sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities. Instead of heading west as in most years of the tour, originally developed by the university as the Whirlwind Wheat State Tour, this year a group traveled Oct. 18 to the Kansas City metropolitan area, typically home to about 37% of KU’s student body.
“What the tour showed us is that we’re not as familiar with Kansas City as we might have thought, living as close as we do,” said Giselle Anatol, director of the Hall Center for the Humanities. “This year’s tour gave us a chance for an urban exploration, highlighting the stories of our Kansas Citian neighbors and revealing many rich opportunities and sites for humanities research.”
A highlight of the tour was a meeting with Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. Lucas had lunch with the group and shared his gratitude for their engagement with the Kansas City community. He also gave remarks about his career, his role as a lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Law, and he answered questions about the future of Kansas City.
Tour stops in Kansas included a visit to the Museum of Deaf History, Arts & Culture, where participants learned about the lives and achievements of the Deaf community, followed by a visit to the Quindaro Ruins and Structure, a historic site that reveals the legacy of an abolitionist settlement.
On the Missouri side of Kansas City, the tour included the Mattie Rhodes Arts Center & Gallery, showcasing local Latinx art and culture, and the Black Archives of Middle America, which preserves the African American history of Kansas City. The group also visited the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, home to an extensive collection of historic items and currently featuring an exhibit on Black dolls, and ended the day with a stop at the Mutual Musicians Foundation, where Kansas City’s jazz legacy comes to life through music performances.
At several stops, scholars or researchers from KU and other institutions of higher education were invited to describe their current work that was related in some way to the tour stop. For example, at the Museum of the Deaf, Kimberly Kuhns of Johnson County Community College spoke about ASL-Deaf studies at JCCC and its partnership with the ASL program at KU's Edwards campus, and Deja Beamon of the University of Missouri–Kansas City spoke about her research on Black girlhood in conjunction with the Black dolls exhibit. Anatol hoped these presentations and the ensuing conversations would build stronger regional networks of scholarly activity.
The tour was organized for the Hall Center by Whitney Yi Knapp, its Applied Humanities Summer Fellow, a doctoral candidate in English. The first Wheat State tours began two decades ago and were designed to take new faculty and staff across Kansas over the course of a week to gain a better understanding of where many of their students came from.
“There is so much character to Kansas City,” Anatol said. “The tour once again reminds us that the humanities are woven into the everyday, waiting to be explored with fresh eyes for a deeper understanding.”