STAFFORD – A traveling exhibit, “Kansans of African Descent: Selected Portraits,” is being featured at the Stafford County Museum Library, 100 N. Main Street in Stafford.
“Kansans of African Descent: Selected Portraits,” was produced by the Kansas Historical Society and is being toured by the Kansas Interpretive Traveling Exhibit Service.
The five-panel exhibit will be open for viewing from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. weekdays until Oct. 31. Admission to the exhibit is free. For information call 620-234-5664.
African Americans have played important roles in the history of Kansas. Well-known people who have called Kansas home are featured in this exhibit of historic and contemporary photographs.
Several famous Kansans are featured in the exhibit.
• Wichita native Lynette Woodard was the first woman member of the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters. Woodard was an All-American basketball player at the University of Kansas. She was a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympics team that won the gold medal.
• Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, known as the “Father of the Negro Exodus,” encouraged many African American immigrants to Kansas. Singleton, a former slave, ushered in the Exoduster movement that brought to Kansas thousands of its first black residents. More than 300 black colonists followed this “Black Moses” to Cherokee County in 1873. By 1878, Singleton founded a second colony in Morris County.
• Julie Lee ran a grocery business in Nicodemus in 1877.