As part of its mission to generate interest and appreciation for the rich cultural heritage of the state and its people, the Society hosts a wide range of engaging and educational events for scholars and community members of all ages.
Sign up to receive event news by email
Walt Disney author Dan Viets offers a two-part program Wednesdays, March 12 and 26 from 11 a.m. to noon, that explores Disney's life as a young boy growing up in Marceline, Mo. and becoming an artist and entrepreneur in Kansas City where he spent ten years pioneering the art of animation. At age 20, Walt founded Laugh-O-Gram Studio on the second floor of the McConahay Building, 1127 East 31st in Kansas City, which operated until 1923.
Historical archeologist Erin Whitson examines one of the darkest times in our nation as 60,000 Native Americans were forced from their ancestral lands on the deadly Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. In 1889, Wahnenauhi (Lucy Keys), a survivor of the infamous “Trail of Tears”, wrote, that “despair in its thickest blackness” settled down on the Chiefs of the Cherokee as they prepared their people to relocate from their traditional homelands to “Indian Territory” in 1838.
Join us for the National History Day in Missouri state contest, administered by The State Historical Society of Missouri. The contest will take place in-person at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Sign up to be a judge and support Missouri students! Top-ranking state projects will go on to compete in the national contest run by the NHD office in College Park, Maryland.
Sign Up to Judge Here
The Vietnam War came to an end 50 years ago when North Vietnam troops captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. Among the U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam, 147,403 soldiers were from Missouri. One of these veterans, born in Missouri and raised in Columbia, tells his personal journey from war to reconciliation. Larry Rottmann served as a lieutenant with the 25th infantry Division during 1967-68. Since his service, Rottmann has made 23 post-war visits to Vietnam.
True stories about war, accompanied by original live music, will be presented by four miliary veterans: Larry Rottmann, Springfield, Tim Burrows, Nixa, Mike O’Brien, Boise, Idaho, and Eli Redstone of Gainesville, Florida. Fifty years after the last soldier left Vietnam, our nation’s historical and cultural memories the Vietnam War have been shaped by movies, books, and other influences. Among the common storylines are the brutal and inhuman enemy and the atrocities and casualties of war. Lost in that depiction is the humanity, if even for a moment.
Kathleen Seale, coordinator of the SHSMO’s Rolla and Springfield Research Centers digs into a unique SHSMO collection that details a 1950s film technology developed by two Rolla theatre owners Rowe Carney and Tom Smith. Their invention of the rotoscope used a special single camera for filming and a cinema system to project movies in a 180-degree spectrum on a curved screen. The rotoscope was ahead of its time and well before the IMAX motion picture technology emerged. Seale's presentation includes historic film clips shot in Rolla, Mo. using the rotoscope.
Author and SHSMO editor Kimberly Harper, will talk about her new book, Men of No Reputation, examining Robert Boatright, one of the greatest con men of the early 20th century, along with the Buckfoot Gang, which operated out of towns in Jasper County and extended its large criminal syndicate throughout the Midwest. Working in concert with a local bank and an influential Democratic boss, “this dean of modern confidence men” and his colorful confederacy of con men seemed untouchable.
SHSMO has a selection of on demand programs that are freely available to worldwide audiences.
Sign up to receive SHSMO On Demand news by email
Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri played a larger role in the Civil War than most Missourians and others appreciate. Responding to the threat of occupation of Cape Girardeau by secessionists, the 20th Illinois Infantry occupied the town on July 10, 1861, and began to plan for four forts to protect against attack from the west and south. This presentation by State Historical Society of Missouri's Bill Eddleman explains how Cape Girardeau was important to the war effort.
The State Historical Society of Missouri sponsors and organizes the National History Day program in Missouri. Each year, thousands of students, grades 6-12, from across the state participate in local, regional, state and national contests. SHSMO education coordinator Danielle Griego hosted a webinar with Kansas City regional coordinator Sadie Troy of Hary S. Truman Library & Museum and Angela Allison, an NHD educator in Blue Springs. This program provides educators with information for the 2025 contest season.
In 1961, the Missouri Civil Defense Agency prepared for nuclear war by planning to evacuate urban populations to caves and mines in rural areas. Robert C. Ellis, the Jefferson City engineer who led the federally financed project, estimated that mines and caves could protect almost three-quarters of Missourians from radioactive fallout. The plan lacked one crucial element: meeting the basic needs of urban refugees. State and federal policymakers assumed rural Americans would voluntarily operate reception centers, and provide food, sanitation facilities, and first aid.
Cape Girardeau Research Center Coordinator Bill Eddleman presents the next installment in his genealogy series: “Combining Traditional and Archival Resources to Tell a Life Story: Michael S. Eddlemon.” Most of us consult the “traditional” sources when researching our families, and many of these are discussed in earlier sessions in this Basic Genealogy series and include census, vital records (birth, marriage, and death), land records, and more.
2024 marks fifty years since Gary Kremer, executive director of SHSMO, published his first essay on the African American experience in Missouri. Over the course of the past five decades, he has written dozens of articles and five books on the topic of race in Missouri, a publishing record unrivalled by any other scholar of the subject.
