Heritage Celebration, Shawnee County Historical Society, Topeka and Shawnee County, Kansas

Embracing Our Heritage:
A celebration of the city's sesquicentennial
sponsored by the Shawnee County Historical Society

The public was invited to celebrate the founding of the city of Topeka, 150 years ago, with speakers and discussion of critical heritage developments in the history of the capital city.

Topeka's history fills key stages in America's enduring struggle for freedom. In 1854 Topeka was born amidst American contensions over the nation's future. Early Topeka founders and leaders would provide kindling, which would ignite, smolder and ultimately burst into the conflagration that became the American Civil War. The results of that conflict would generate in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "a new birth of freedom." A century later Topeka occupied center stage in critical national events that redefined "equal protection under law" in terms of freedom derived through public education.

As its contribution to the sesquicentennial, the Shawnee County Historical Society is readying the Historic Ritchie House to serve as a catalyst for embracing local rich heritage devoted to American freedom.

In anticipation of that project's completion, the Society sponsored this public discussion of the city's role in the nation's heritage:

Betty Paxson read John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Kanzas
Emigrants," a widely celebrated poem of the late 1850s.
Tim Westcott of Park College spoke about the underground
railroad in Shawnee County prior to the Civil War.
Ralph Skoog identified key acts of the Kansas legislature that
maintained Kansas as the land of the free.
LaTonya Miller of the National Park Service reviewed the
development of the Brown v Board museum.
Bill Wagnon discussed the contribution of John Ritchie in the
city's heritage.