moral tested to be in the portrait gallery. we are a place to reflect on those people who have change the national conversation and got us to where we are today. announcer: watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3. on the campus of lawrence, campus, learning about the cities history. we take you inside the wilcox collection of political movements, the largest collection of right-wing political literature in the country. >> the wilcox collection is really a celebration of free speech. it is one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. it represents both left and right wing collections on the political spectrum.

the wilcox collection was acquired by the university of kansas library in 1965. we just celebrated our 50th anniversary. it was established by laird wilcox, who was at the time a slightly older than usual student here at the university. laird became interested in the left and right wing materials when he was very young. his grandparents, aunts and goals were all politically intense. they would have long discussions at the dinner table. some of them are right wingers , some of them were on the left. unbeknownst to his parents, he set up a po box and began writing to these organizations asking them for materials, and they sent them to him. when he arrived at the university of kansas, he had for about four filing cabinets full

of material, and he was politically active on campus. he was a member of the students for democratic society, but decided he was interested in selling his collection and the university librarys purchased it. the collections have always stood for free speech. and whenever i am asked to describe the collection, i stress that we collect both the left and right wing, and so we tried to present both sides of the issues, and that is actually one of the strengths of the wilcox collection. is that someone can come here and do research and actually look at materials from both sides. bookss a selection of whose authors use the wilcox collection for their research. we have researchers from all over the world come to use the

wilcox collection. extremists,merican laird wroteat himself. it came out in the mid-1990's, just before the oklahoma city bombing, and after that terrible event occurred, his publishers wanted him to republish the book, and there is a photo from the bombing site. these other materials that i have laid out on the table are materials from the collection itself. this first grouping represents hispanics and their interests in american farm workers. it has served as the voice of the mexican-americans. this book is a cookbook.

you can see the play on caesar salad. this came out in support of the american farm workers strikes in the 1970's. tuce wasat time, let being boycotted. this cookbook on salads does not include lettuce. cesar chavez wrote some himself for the book. the next grouping represents the the collection, made up of materials that are usually thrown away, mailings and flyers that you might pick up on the street. so that is one of the values of these collections, is that they represent things that are often times not kept. a lot of that work was done by laird himself. you can see that on some of these items. there is the wilcox collection stamp with the date. this was received in july of 1986. and so laird acquired this

, probably through writing to the organization and requesting their materials. because the wilcox collection has been around for 50 years, it really can -- does document a long span of time. the whole of the latter part of the 20th century. and so you can see some of the issues like gun control and immigration control are still issues being debated today. they have been around for sometimes 20 and 30 years. these are all materials that represent the things that were found to be blamed on communism, even the weather, disastrous weather, was blamed on communism by william mcburney. these other books are more

anti-communist materials, what was behind lee harvey oswald after he assassinated president fluoridationeven as an additive to drinking water . it became an issue associated with communists. i have not read it, but they somehow thought it was a communist plot that would ruin us all. this grouping represents the environmental movement. this is racial parsons groundbreaking book -- rachel parsons groundbreaking book "silent spring." and her research helped to launch the environmental movement. buttonser sticker and are parts of the collection, and they are the part i really

enjoyed working with. i love the fact that with just a few words, you can get a message across that really says it all, light for instance, this little, tiny sticker here, flush rush, from now, the national organization of women. they are talking about rush limbaugh, of course. run of the black panther newspaper. we have a large gathering of ephemera from the black panthers, where they talk about their mission, with the issues were, what they were trying to create, then we also have other materials relating to civil rights. so there is this small pamphlet here that was produced by the student nonviolent coordinating committee.

this is from the 1960's, and the se black panthers are from the 1960's as well and they go to the early 1970's. this is a manuscript collection that we acquired from a woman named phyllis johnson. she was a very conservative person who lived in california. she was a member of the minute women of the united states. the minute women called themselves a nonpartisan organizations united to combat communism, socialism, fascism, or collectivism in america. this is one of the newer parts of the wilcox collection that we have acquired. these are do-it-yourself publications that people creates

around an issue or a part of their lives. they might even talk about their feelings about different issues like bullying or things like that. the advantages of them are that you can produce one yourself just by cutting and pasting images and then xeroxing the sheets, stapling them together. you can do 10 or 20 and pass them around among your friends. we have probably about 1500. sometimes we face criticism for collecting the materials that we do -- the more extreme materials, because people feel that we are giving these organizations a platform. and we have to keep in mind that this is a collection that is based on free speech, and a university campus is really the

ideal space to be gathering materials that represent a lot of different ideas and document historically just what is happening in the world. if you don't have materials that represent both sides, then you really can't get a clear impression of what the issues are. announcer: our staff recently traveled to lawrence, kansas to learn about its rich history. learn about lawrence and other stops at c-span.org/citiestour. you are watching american history tv come all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. announcer: next on american history tv, military historian

talks about his book "sons of freedom." talk, he argues that without the american effort in 1918, the french and british could not have defeated germany and achieved the armistice in 1918. this talk is part of a daylong national hosted by the world war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. it is about one hour and 10 minutes. >> good morning. i am the curator of education at your national world war i is he him and memorial, located right here in kansas city, missouri, where it has been since 1926, and it is an honor to welcome you back or the first time to what is our fifth at centennial symposium series. with that