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By Mike Cuenca | August 19, 2001
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As Lawrence basks in the civic pride generated by Hobbs Park Day and
celebrates the symbolic preservation of the home of one of its founding
citizens, we should remember some of the realities among the myths
about the "Free State."
Lawrence's founders took a public stand against the status quo of
legalized slavery. However, even as this nation's founding fathers
disconnected their own racist practices from their philosophies of
equality, so did Lawrence's founders. White abolitionists founded
Lawrence as a place where they themselves would be safe to support
abolitionist activities, but they did not create a city where black
Americans would be free from the segregation and persecution of other
American cities and states. A minority of Lawrence's original residents
stood against slavery, and Lawrence was not a place where black
Americans would themselves be guaranteed a safe haven. Remember that
the Underground Railroad needed hiding places for runaway slaves even
here in Lawrence.
Don't forget the direct criticisms of the
attitudes in Lawrence by Langston Hughes, who documented the
segregation in Lawrence as late as the 1950s. Don't forget the racial
upheaval in Lawrence in the 1970s. Don't forget the present determined
battle to weaken and limit the enforcement of civil rights laws
currently being waged by Lawrence's University of Kansas. Don't you
think Lawrence's founders would be shocked and dismayed to find that
today's University of pro-slavery Missouri employs a greater percentage
of black Americans as full-time faculty than does today's University of
Free-State Kansas?
The Rev. Emanuel Cleaver, former mayor of
a city in pro-slavery Missouri, will be the keynote speaker at the
Hobbs Park festivities. Consider the irony that Free State Lawrence has
had to "borrow" a black mayor from pro-slavery Missouri because
Lawrence has never itself had a black mayor.
Lawrence should
be proud of its founders' stand against slavery. Today's Lawrence
citizens should look beyond the politically'correct rhetoric of the
past and the present to actually do something to actively stand against
the reality of the ongoing racial segregation and discrimination right
here in this "Free State" community.
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Originally published by the Lawrence Journal-World.
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