that i talked about happened more in the north than it did in the south, just because of logistics and the number of men, et cetera. but the south did have a very rich tradition during the civil war. they actually had the largest hospital, civil war hospital, during the war. larger than any of the northern hospitals. so, yes, it needs to be written about, it needs to be discussed and should be presented. well, thank you very much, and i appreciate you coming. [ applause ] >> thank you for coming, and i encourage you to -- i encourage you to check our schedule for the remaining lectures in this series and for the entire series. thanks again. [ applause ]

welcome to old cow town museum, wichita, kansas. >> it's wichita weekend on american history tv. for the next hour we'll explore the history of this city of just about 400,000, as our local content vehicle staff visits numerous historic sites and muse museums. >> we're flying over downtown wichita, air capital of the world. >> coming up in just a moment, a look at the roots of the american airline industry at the wichita aviation museum. >> 70% of all general aviation aircraft have been constructed in wichita and that number is still about 40% to 45% annually, so a lot of planes produced here. >> then in about 30 minutes the story of ax wielding carrie nation, as we learn about her headline making antics and trying to stop drinking in underground bars.

>> 6 foot woman walks in with an ax, throwing rocks, destroying things, you probably don't get in her way. >> and to round out the hour we travel to downtown wichita to examine the dockham drugstore sit-in with participants in one of the civil right's movement -- >> they got the idea because of the sheer numbers of us. we came there for a purpose. that was to make a purpose and to challenge a 50-year-old custom. >> all this and more as c-span and cox communications takes you to wichita on american history tv. we're flying over downtown wichita, the air capital of the world. >> there is just a general excitement about aviation. it was something new. it was the feeling that it was going to take us to higher places. is that fair to say? we're at the kansas aviation museum in wichita, kansas. our mission is to preserve and

present kansas aviation heritage. with a real focus on wichita aviation heritage. you look at the history of aviation, from basically the wright brothers, moving forward to today. about 70% of all general aviation aircraft have been constructed in wichita. that's a huge number. when you think about the msa or the population of wichita being about half a million, compared to other cities of similar size and to say that historically any city has 70% of the market share in any one industry. it's pretty significant. that number's still about 40% to 45% annually. people who wanted to build planes in the late teens and early '20s came here seeking venture capital. that's why i've come to call wichita the silicon valley of aviation, in the same way people in the '80s and '90s and today migrate to silicon valley to seek venture capital to build computers. people who wanted to build

planes, many, actually, came here because there was lots of oil money. one of the largest oil fields in america is just to the northeast of here. the eldorado oil field. so there were lots of people with huge amounts of money as a result of oil. the people who wanted to build planes came here seeking that capital. this is a really unique building. it was the original wichita air terminal from 1934 to 1954. it's 1 of 12 buildings like this built during the first round of air terminal construction that still exists. it's the only one built in what's known as the indian art dekko style that exists anywhere in the country. at that time in the mid '20s when local officials started beginning to think about a grand air terminal, charles lindbergh was traveling the country and he came to wichita with the idea it would be on the major way

between los angeles and new york and he worked with local official l.w. clapp. together he and lindbergh went all over the area looking for an appropriate site, and they finally settled upon this one. is the highest point in wichita and one of the reasons they picked it, but also the particular type of grass that grew here had a very tight weave, if you will, and it made for a good landing strip, and the first six or seven years this air terminal was in business, it had no runway. it just simply out in the field had a big circle of white rock and an air sock and pilots would fly over and determine the wind direction and then land into the wind in the grass. and then roll up to the terminal. because of air travel at that time, and this was a major route between new york and los angeles, this was the fourth busiest airport in the country for about 20 years, and, also, because of air travel and the fact that people didn't use private planes in the way they do now, just about any famous person you can think of from the '30s and '40s passed through this airport.

we have photographs of famous actors who were here at the -- at the airport. fred astaire -- a true story corroborated by someone at the airport at that time, fred astaire actually did a tap routine out in the atrium during a weather delay for the other waiting passengers. so a lot of kind of neat stories about famous people who passed through this building. this is our ramp area. this is where the majority of our planes are showcased. the area where we are right now is an area where people would come and they would throw their blankets out. right over here you can see the line of the concrete. the ground level was actually there and there were stairs off this terrace. over here to the left where these picnic tables are there was a little kind of a building there, and they would sell hot dogs and hamburgers things like that and people would come out, throw their blankets out and have their lunch and watch the planes come in. a plane would roll up and folks

would disembark and go up into the building, but the folks out here would just walk out and stand around the plane as it was being refuelled. there were no fences at that time, and obviously, much less security. it was a totally different environment. the focus of our collection is kansas aviation heritage. so if the plane was built here or flown here, then we're going to be interested in and it we have a number of planes here. everything from 1920 swallow through more modern era planes, and the collection is primarily the result of two sources. either individuals who have donated their personal planes to the museum, or corporations that have donated planes in the museum. here's one other category. that is we do have five planes out on the ramp that were -- that are on loan from the u.s. air force museum in dayton, ohio. this is a 1920 laird swallow. this is a very important plane in wichita aviation heritage.

it's the first production aircraft in wichita. so there were 43 of these built between 1920 and 1923, and it's the first time in wichita and very early in aviation heritage where people recognized, hey, if we build more of these, the economy of scale, we can sell them to a wider audience for less money. this is the only 1920 swallow that exists. there weren't any, and this particular one is a replica, and if you look right here, our volunteers started with about 10 or 15 of these brackets, and these are original brackets, and they used those to scale photographs, and from the photographs, took hundreds of measurements and with the measurements created the working drawings and then built the plane from those drawings. and so this is very representative of the amazing skill of our volunteers here at the museum. what i wanted you to see over

here is, where the pilot would have sat in this basket, if you can see it through the mylar. we stretch this mylar on here so people could see it, the internal of the plane. but also, i don't know whether you can get a shot of that, but the control stick is actually a baseball bat. >> is that what would have been originally used? >> yes. if you think about the development of aviation technology from 1920, when this plane was built, through the end of world war ii, you went from this plane, which had an ox 5 engine that produced 90 horsepower, flew at about 120 miles per hour. 1920 to 1945, the beginning of the jet age. the most intense period of development of aviation technology, and so what was happening here in wichita was some 80 companies building planes and plane parts is the experimentation that led to the jet age. the golden age of aviation. now, the plane that we're seeing

in front of us is a learjet 23. and it was the first learjet ever built. the first model. it was actually the sixth one ever built. this was actually bill lear's personal plane. this plane doesn't seem very unusual now, but back then, this was cutting edge. i mean, learjet set the standard for what we know today as the business jet, the corporate jet. this is where it all started right here. this is model 73 steerman. it was actually in a military, navy military plane known as the ns-1, and this was -- it's a very iconic plane. there was an army version of this plane that had a blue fuselage and yellow wings. this was flown by navy aviators during world war ii as a trainer. so just about any naval aviator that flew in world war ii would

have trained in this plane at some point in his career. and it's interesting, because it's a steerman, but at that point in time, boeing actually owns the steerman brand. so this is an early boeing plane, but this is where it all started with a plane just like this. >> what is boeing's legacy here in wichita? >> well, they have a huge legacy here. i mean, at their height, during world war ii, they were employs 40,000 people. they built whole neighborhoods, like plainview, that's just a mile or so from here and they built those specifically for their workers. so they have a huge legacy here. they've been a supporter of the community for years and years. sad that they're leaving, but you know, we've had a good run with the company. >> whenever there's a downturn in the economy like there has been recently in 2009 and moving forward, some 10,000 or 12,000 people laid off, and the

unemployment ranks go up, so it becomes very challenging. the thing that people in this community understand is, because they've lived through it, through lots of those cycles of the ups and downs of the economy, is, they understand that that's going to happen. i'm not saying it doesn't hurt, but they know that that's going to happen, and i think people here prepare for it. in terms of the psychology of it. and they know that -- that sooner or later the economy will turn around and they'll get rehired. people recognize that's going to happen in this community. people do just have a love affair with especially americans i think have a love affair with aviation. i think it's just the idea that, that there's another dimension. you know, there's a third dimension that we can experience outside of the two dimensions that we can walk this way and that. we can also go up.

all weekend, american history tv is featuring the history of wichita, kansas. an area that served as a trading center and meeting place for nomadic peoples for at least 11,000 years. hosted by our cox communications cable partner, c-span's local content vehicles recently visited many historic sites, showcasing the city's rich history. learn more about wichita, kansas, all weekend long on american history tv. welcome to old cow town museum, wichita, kansas. >> we are a living history museum that represents the history of wichita and the sedgwick county from 1865 through 1880. a 15-year time span. we have three different distinct types of economic activity that really change and enhance the town. the first five years were primarily buffalo hunting, trading with the native

americans and also freighting down into oklahoma. the second five years has to do with the cowboys and cattle coming to wichita, the railroad coming to wichita and all of the fallout that comes from that. then third ly we have our farmers. after that point, we're looking to see what we can do to create a business out of agricultural interests and also the growing entry that we've got here. the first place i want to show you is the munger house. it's the only remaining original structure from the 1865 to 1870 time. and it was a very important building in our history in that it is a residence but it's also the headquarters of the wichita company that came down here to create shall we say the city of

wichita. what was going on at the time is we had a small military outpost camp that was stationed here. we had buffalo hunters and a small trading post. we have freighting into oklahoma. we got a lot of economic activity going on, but we'd like to capitalize on it. and so some gentlemen from topeka decide that they would form a company to come down and create a town. and so mr. munger was the most skill skill skilled person of that group. he came down here and built this log cabin pretty much by himself. the building served as a hotel as well as a land office. i often tell folks that we start out basically as a 16 building town with anywhere from 40 to 70 residences. so there really weren't that many folks. a lot of people going through, military going through, freighters going back and forth between oklahoma so there's not really a real stable population of much more than that, about 50 to 60 people who were here. and munger was one of them. that's what he was hoping to do

was to recruit people to stay and live here and start their businesses and that type of thing. we, of course, are in the midst of the victorian time. queen victoria over in england is setting the fashion as to how people should live properly and despite the fact that we're here in the midwest, people have the mindset from the east and west coast that victorian is the way you should be and the way you should act. so as ironic as it may seem, a lot of the fashions that the ladies in our 1870s time period were actually based on what you would have seen back in philadelphia. we got a number of photographs of some of our early settlers in their victorian finest, their frock coats and the ladies with their dresses, and if you would cut out the background of all the tall prairie grasses and slip them in front of a brick building like in philadelphia, they would be just in fashion.

that was keeping up with what the style was. what we're in right now is our exhibit of the wichita eagle newspaper. the wichita eagle was created and run by one of our town founders, marshall murdoch. now, he wasn't exactly here whenever the town began, but mr. murdoch was essential in the development and the expansion of our town. he was the creator of the "wichita city eagle," and newspapers of that time especially his newspaper is not necessarily a news dispensing newspaper. it's more of a convention and visitors bureau type paper. whenever he was done with his newspaper run for his subscribers he would make quite a few extra copies and what he would do he would send them to places in philadelphia and new york and all over the united states so people in their reading rooms where other folks were reading newspapers from other parts of the country could read all about wichita and see

what kind of a grand and glorious place it would be. mr. murdoch was a very interesting character. and he was gentleman who was recruited by the city fathers because of his newspaper ability. in our time we would have called it booster newspaperism. so he basically is promoting the town. he's a very, very well known throughout the midwest and also throughout the country for his style of journalism and also for his promotion and no-holds-barred, no hesitation about promoting the virtues of the town. he wants to sell this town as hard as he can because whenever you get enough people in the town, the town was, of course, assured to survive. at least that's what their goal was. now, mr. murdoch was not the kind of person that would tell you any lies but he also would kind of maybe leave a little bit out shall we say. rather than saying that sometime in the middle of the spring your street is going to become open

sewers, he might say, well, we have a very nice, strong south wind that keeps the air fresh and clean. so does he lie? not certainly, but he paints wichita in a good light, so -- what we are attempting to create is an economic engine that will basically keep our town together. we have lots of ambitious people who have come from all corners of the united states to live their lives and they would like, of course, to invest in something that's going to prosper. one of the things that they looked at was the cattle trade was a vehicle to get them established, get the economic engine going. most folks realized the cattle trade would be a short term type of a situation and it toes only last for four years here in wichita. wichita acquiring the cattle trade presented it with a certain amount of problems. on one hand you have the people who are attempting to create a midwest victorian town that replicates that on the east coast. at the same time, you have to

have that economic engine that runs. now, you have to remember that cowboys are basically high schoolers on spring break. you basically have boys who are maybe away from their house and home for the first time in their lives and they're out looking for fun and excitement. unfortunately, they've spent the last three months staring at cattle seven days a week. by the time they get to wichita, they want to cut loose. they are looking for drinking, dancing and gambling and ladies of the evening to spend their time with. wichita is divided by the arkansas river. on one side of the river there was a small undeveloped region called delano. it was not terribly well enforced. because of that a lot of the drinking, dancing, gambling houses occurred over in that part of the city. and, of course, the folks here on the east side kind of felt well none of that is going on here so we can preserve our families and you can have your business over there and support the cowboys and everything will

get along fine. by 1876 the farmers and the cowboys are not getting along. the farmers are upset at the preferential treatment, the high prices that are being charged, different things that are going on and so they went to topeka. they had the quarantine line moved to the western edge of sedgwick county. what that was was a line north and south that said no texas cattle could be on the eastern side and they all had to move toward dodge city. now, whenever they're gone, there's quite a vacuum, but by then we have enough economic activity going on with farming industries as well as businesses such as grain elevators and flour mills and biscuit factories and things like that that really propel us into the future. the folks who came out here were entrepreneurs and people who are willing to great risks to get the cattle here, number one we became the county seat by shall we say running roughshod over

some of our neighbors. we floated our own bonds so we could create our own railroad because the santa fe was heading west and they bypassed us so we had to create our own railroad to meet up with them. once that happened then we embraced the cattle trade that was coming through. so there's a lot of men who were basically putting their whole fortunes on the line creating a future. a lot of that activity still happens here in wichita. if you look at all the flight industries that have happened, we're known as the air capital, and a lot of those industries became because gentlemen had ideas of things to try. we also are the home of the first pizza hut, again frank carney, someone taking a risk and starting something and so that entrepreneurial spirit really has been the reason why wichita began and what keeps it going. this weekend american history tv is joining our cox communications cable partners in

wichita, kansas, to showcase its rich history. to learn more about our local content vehicles and our 2012 tour, visit c-span.org/localcontent. and we continue now with our look at wichita, kansas. this is american history tv on c-span3. was the first populist governor not only of kansas but of the nation. >> what led to the populist movement was kind of a rural versus agrarian development. the farmers weren't ending up with anything. you know, one of the things that i think makes the populist movement is it touched everyone. it was here at the wichita auditorium that lorenzo lewelling who was an unknown, he gave a talk that so impassioned

people he was elected governor. >> his speech was a fiery speech. his rhetoric was really toward that of a war general kind of leading some troops into battle. he talked about taking down the government that had been in bed with the railroads. he also talked about cooperation with the state's other political party, the democrats. and that's really what kind of won him over, the people over, at the populist convention, was the fact that he was willing to accept the point of -- but in 1892, they needed those democratic votes to secure an electoral victory. that's what he promoted and basically what won him this nomination. >> he took august on january 10th of 1893 and almost immediately there was this power play between the populist and republican party.

neither one was going to yield power. it was up to lewelling to decide what's going to happen. he ends up calling in the militia. there are militia men surrounding the capitol with guns, you can hear drums beating. populists are not yielding, neither are the republicans. food has to be send up and down on ropes through the capitol building. no one's going home. valentine's day comes. no one's going home. finally it goes to the supreme court. they decide the republicans meet in one side of the capitol, populists have to meet in the other part. that's what kind of ends the war. >> so really at the heart of the issue was an election dispute. there were 12 seats in the house that were contested by -- that the republicans had said that they won that the populists were contesting, so today comes to convene in the house, and we have 24 people show up for 12

seats and obviously that's not going to work. they divide on party lines. that's where they get the legislative war kind of happening. basically it's a stalemate in the house of representatives, no legislation is getting passed. desperate kansans who are in western kansas who have been suffering a drought for the last five years aren't getting the help they need from their government. so there's a backlash against the populists coming out of this legislator war of 1893 and lewelling becomes a scapegoat for this and that was why he was not able to be re-elected. he remains a populist at least up until 1896 when williams jennings brian runs for united states president and ends up winning the nomination. not only the populist party but the democratic party as well. after that he becomes more of a socialist. he's not accepted really by his former populist brethren and he can't go back to the republican party because he's the enemy now. so he kind of switches gears and

goes more toward socialism and he actually ends up getting elected to the state united states senate. lewelling's major downfall was the fact that he wasn't a good enough leader. i don't think he was able to be the voice of his party like he was the face of his party here in kansas. i don't think he controlled what his party did enough to really for him to really make some strong reforms that he had advocated for. >> and i also feel like it's part of listening to the moderate voice, that the extremes, no matter how passionate they may be, sometimes it's the moderate voice that wins over in the long run. >> all weekend american history tv is featuring the history of wichita, kansas, an area permanently settled by wichita indians in 1863.

hosted by our cox communications cable partner, c-span's local content vehicles recently visited many historic sites showcasing the city's rich history. learn more about wichita, kansas, all weekend on american history tv. nation promoted prohibition across the united states during the women's temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. kansas banned the sale of alcohol in 1881 but many establishments continued to sell alcohol illegally. >> she would stoke fear in the bars she would enter and patrons at the bar drinking, 6 foot woman walks in with an ax, throwing rocks. destroying things. you probably don't get in her way. this is the eaton place apartments, originally it was the eaton hotel. before that, it was the carrie hotel. where the infamous carrie nation destroyed the bar on her crusade

against prohibition here in kansas. december 26th, 1900, she entered the carrie hotel bar. she sang songs, said prayers, grabbed her ax, and began smashing the bar, destroying the bottles of booze, and damaged the lovely painting of cleopatra that hung behind the bar. it all started in 1854 when carrie was born, about 150 years ago. and about 1900 when she was in her late 40s by then, moved to medicine lodge, kansas. in medicine lodge, she joined the temperance group. ladies who were in support of prohibition. 1881 kansas was in prohibition. the nation didn't enter prohibition until much later after the turn of the century, if you can imagine that.