SHSMO On Demand Index

Step into the creative world of St. Louis artist Spencer T. Banks, a popular African American graphic designer and comic strip artist of the 1930s-1960s whose important legacy has been overlooked. The State Historical Society of Missouri Art Curator Joan Stack explores Banks’s early struggles and career as a freelance artist in St. Louis, Missouri, and his groundbreaking 1939 comic strip "Pokenia," an adventure cartoon featuring a stylish professional Black Woman as its hero.

The State Historical Society of Missouri dedicated the William Guitar Little Missouri Gallery of Art in the Center for Missouri Studies to honor Columbia resident Bill Little, whose generous gifts will help fund new art acquisitions for the State Historical Society. SHSMO Art Curator Joan Stack, along with SHSMO Executive Director Gary Kremer, Senator Roy Blunt, University of Missouri President Mun Choi, and artist Nora Othic of Marceline, Mo., spoke at the gallery dedication attended by many friends and family of Bill Little.

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.

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.

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.

In the spring of 1885, newspapers around the United States carried sensational coverage of mysterious bones, artifacts, and alleged riches discovered by an exploration party in Tim Collins’ coal mine near Moberly, Missouri. However, just as quickly as the story reached a national audience, allegations of a hoax dampened the excitement. Join State Historical Society of Missouri Assistant Director of Research, Sean Rost, for Chapter 5 of the Missouri Mysteries series as he explores the mystery of Collins’ Coal Mine. 

Peter Herschend is the co-founder of Herschend Entertainment Corporation (formerly Silver Dollar City, Inc). The Herschend family business started in Southwest Missouri with a hole in the ground called Marvel Cave. To give cave visitors more to do, Peter and his brother Jack built an old Ozarks Village named Silver Dollar City - now USA TODAY'S and Tripadvisor's number one theme park in America. Today, Herschend Enterprises is the nation's largest family-owned entertainment company. 

Nestled in the foothills of the Saint François mountains, Old Mines, Mo., is a place where the boundary between history and folklore is especially thin. French colonists established the lead mining town in 1723. As the local French dialect was dying over the course of the 20th century, residents faced tough decisions about which aspects of their heritage were essential and how best to carry the culture forward. Beginning in the 1930s, scholars and locals began amassing an archive of oral literature, songs, and customs.

Dr. Larry Gragg, professor emeritus at Missouri S&T takes the viewer behind the scenes of history documentaries that he's participated in as an on-camera interviewee. Short clips of footage from documentaries will be shown in this in-person and virtual presentation. This program is in conjunction with the new exhibition Lights, Camera, ROLLA, an exhibition that explores the history of film in Rolla and its links to Hollywood.

Kathleen Seale, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri research centers in Rolla and Springfield, gave a talk about the history of the Rotoscope film process developed by two Missourians: Rowe Carney, Jr. of Rolla and Tom Smith of Urbana. This presentation is part of the opening reception of Lights, Camera, ROLLA, an exhibition that explores the history of film in Rolla and its links to Hollywood.

Bill Eddleman, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri's Cape Girardeau Research Center, continues the popular geneology series with insight into immigration records. Most family historians in the U. S. have ancestors who migrated from other continents. Depending on the time period of immigration and port of arrival, it can be difficult to find these ancestors and tell their immigration story. This session will summarize surviving immigration records from different time periods and where to find them.

History books tend to include Missouri’s Indigenous population only during periods when they were a threat to the state’s white settlement. These histories overlook the fact that Native people have lived here for at least twelve thousand years and continue to call Missouri home today. 

Dr. Joan Stack, curator of art collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri, gives a talk and shares artwork of Black artists in Missouri. Dr. Stack focuses on ten artists of the 20th and 21st centuries with an emphasis on artists whose artwork is in the collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

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The Orphan Train Movement sent an estimated quarter million children from New York City to the Midwest and the South from 1854 to 1929, with up to 50,000 of them coming to Missouri. One of those children was a five-year-old boy named Joseph Aner, who was placed with the Markway family just outside Jefferson City. As Joseph grew up, he wondered who his mother was, and how she could have left him at an orphanage.

More than a century later, Joseph’s grandchildren had the same questions.

SHSMO executive director Gary Kremer connects the past to the present in his latest book as he ponders why history played out as it did over the course of two centuries since Missouri’s admittance to the Union.

For centuries, the violin has been both a “people’s instrument” as well as a “palace” instrument that spans the globe. Whether called “violin” or “fiddle” (they are the same, just with differing customs of learning and performance), it continues to be enjoyed across many different traditions and communities. 

Bill Eddleman, coordinator of the State Historical Society of Missouri Cape Girardeau Research Center presents the 16th installment in his basic genealogy series on the topic: “Salt, Schools, Swamps, Military Bounties, and Homesteads: Researching Non-standard Federal Lands.”

David Steward was the featured speaker in the State Historical Society of Missouri’s annual My Missouri Lecture on Oct. 28, 1 p.m. at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia, Mo. Steward is the founder and chairman of World Wide Technology, the largest Black-owned company in the United States. The civic and business leader will be in conversation with Gary Kremer, executive director of the State Historical Society, about how Steward’s upbringing in Clinton, Mo. and his Missouri experiences contributed to his success in building a technology company in St. Louis.

In 1972, Norma E. Short of Stover, Missouri, gained national attention for her role in a project called “Skylook.” A journalist by trade, Short rose from a columnist at the Salem Post to compiling and editing international reports of unknown objects in the sky. In this episode of Missouri Mysteries, Sean Rost, SHSMO assistant director of research, explores the curious case of Norma E. Short. This program was recorded live on Zoom on Oct. 18, 2023.

Learn about the history of the Western Conservatory of Music, originally established in Rolla in 1882. Later, the music school would move briefly to Carthage, then Kansas City, and finally to Chicago. Dr. David Samson, Missouri S&T assistant professor of music, talks about the history of the conservatory. Dr. Sampson's presentation was held before an audience at Missouri Science and Technology Curtis Laws Wilson Library in Rolla on Oct. 17, 2023, and recorded on Zoom. The presentation was cosponsored by the State Historical Society of Missouri and Missouri S&T Archives.

Learn more about the history of the Missouri University of Science and Technology radio station in Rolla, which has trained students in broadcasting since 1963. Dr. Jeff Schramm, KMNR’s faculty advisor, explores the station's 60-year history on campus. Unlike commercial radio, KMNR's format has been a free-form radio station, offering a wide variety of music and programs for its listeners. This program aired on Zoom 10-10-23 and was cosponsored by the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Missouri S&T Archives.