Famous Kansans Trading Cards - Category

Find a category that interests you and then learn more about a Famous Kansan through the Trading Card. For even more information check out the person on Kansapedia.

African Americans:

Gwendolyn Brooks - poet
Oliver Brown - named as lead plaintiff on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
McKinley Burnett - president of Topeka NAACP
George Washington Carver - famed botantist
Wilt Chamberlain - KU basketball star
John Denny - Buffalo Soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
Aaron Douglas - artist-illustrator during Harlem Renaissance
Alfred Fairfax - first African American to serve in the Kansas Legislature
Junius Groves - founded community of Groves Center and sold small tracts of land to African American settlers
Langston Hughes - poet
Eva Jessye - walked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 civil rights march
Lutie Lytle - first African American woman admitted to Kansas bar
William Matthews - helped many Missouri slaves escape to Kansas and other free states
Edward McCabe - state auditor; first African American to hold statewide office in a northern state
Hattie McDaniel - actress in more than 300 films
Oscar Micheaux - first African American feature filmmaker
Corinthian Nutter - protested school segregation
Charlie Parker - saxophone player; developed "bebop"
Gordon Parks* - nationally recognized photographer
Elisha Scott - represented plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka at local level
Benjamin Singleton - organized nearly 300 African Americans to follow him to Kansas
Lucinda Todd - secretary of Topeka NAACP
Reuben Waller - Buffalo Soldier
Mamie Williams - prominent educator

American Indians:

Allegawaho - Kaw - leader during removal to Oklahoma
Sallie Bluejacket - Shawnee - attended Shawnee Indian Mission school
Blackbear Bosin - Kiowa and Comanche - artist
Abram Burnett - Pottawatomie - interpreter and mediator
Jesse Chisholm - Cherokee - trader and guide, Chisholm Trail named for him
Charles Curtis* - Kansa - politician
Annie Grinter - Delaware - married Moses Grinter
Satanta* - Kiowa chief - signed 1867 Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty
Ten Bears - Comanche - eloquent speaker at Medicine Lodge Treaty Conference
Jim Thorpe - Sac and Fox - great athlete

Hispanics:

Teresa Cuevas - nationally recognized violinist
Dioniso Campos Garcia - received numerous honors for community service

Activists:

Samuel and Florella Adair - abolitionists who were also involved with the Underground Railroad
Esther Brown - civil rights activist
John Brown* - used violence to try to end slavery
Oliver Brown - one of the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
McKinley Burnett - led the challenge against segregated schools in Kansas
Annie Diggs - writer who supported women's rights and the Populist movement
Mary Elizabeth Lease - passionate speaker in forefront of Populist Party
Carry Nation* - used violence in support of the women's temperance movement
Clarina Nichols - advocate for women's rights and abolition of slavery
Corinthian Nutter - protested school segregation
Kate Richards O'Hare - anti-war activist; crusaded for better prisons
Charles Sheldon - minister active in improving lives of African-Americans and prohibition.

Actors/Performers:

Louise Brooks - silent movie star and dancer
Dennis Hopper - appeared in more than 150 films and received several Academy Award nominations
Gordon Jump - portrayed Arthur Carlson in television's WKRP in Cincinnati
Buster Keaton - made more than 100 films, known for
Emmett Kelly - portrayed Weary Willie, a sad white-faced clown
Hattie McDaniel - received Academy Award for Gone with the Wind
ZaSu Pitts - made more than 100 films, costarred in television's My Little Margie and Gale Storm Show
Charles Rogers - starred in Academy Award winning Wings
Milburn Stone - received Emmy Award for playing Doc on television's Gunsmoke
Vivian Vance - played sidekick in television's I Love Lucy

Artists:

Blackbear Bosin - sculpture of Keeper of the Plains
John Steuart Curry* - created Tragic Prelude mural in Kansas State Capitol
Samuel Dinsmoor - grassroots artist, constructed Garden of Eden in Lucas
Aaron Douglas - illustrator-artist during Harlem Renaissance
Oscar Micheaux - wrote, produced, and directed 44 feature films
Mitsugi Ohno - built a glass scale model of USS Constitution
Gordon Parks* - nationally recognized photographer, author, poet, filmmaker
John Fenton Pratt - photographer
Samuel Reader - drawings depict Battle of Big Blue and other Civil War experiences
Birger Sandzen - from Sweden, known for painting colorful landscapes

Athletes/Athletics:

Forrest Allen - Kansas University basketball coach
Wilt Chamberlain - played NBA basketball for 14 years
Glenn Cunningham - Olympic runner
Walter Johnson - one of the first players elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
James Naismith* - invented the game of basketball
Wes Santee - premiere miler and Olympic athlete
Jim Thorpe - gold medal winner in Olympics; baseball player; pro football player
Jess Willard - world heavyweight boxing champion

Aviators:

Clyde Cessna* - pilot, who started Cessna Aircraft Corporation
Amelia Earhart* - first woman pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean
Martin and Osa Johnson - first pilots to fly over Kilmanjaro
Charles Lindbergh - barnstormer
Albin Longren - made first successful flight in a Kansas built airplane
Lloyd Stearman - flew seaplanes in Navy; became president of Lockheed Corporation

Civil Rights:

Esther Brown - worked for school desegregation

McKinley Burnett - led fight against segregated schools in Kansas
Oliver Brown - Plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Chester Lewis - helped desegregate restaurants, swimming pools, businesses, and government agencies
Clarina Nichols - advocate for women's rights and abolition of slavery
Corinthian Nutter - protested school segregation
Lucinda Todd - Plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; teacher
Mary White - campaigned for racial equality at her high school

Entrepreneurs:

Walter Anderson - co-founder of White Castle Restaurants, fast food pioneer
Walter and Olive Beech - couple who owned Beech Aircraft Company
Arthur Capper* - owner of Topeka Daily Capital
Clyde Cessna* - built first plane in 1911; established Cessna Aircraft Corporation
Walter Chrysler* - Head of Chrysler Corporation (automobiles)
William Cody - organized wild west shows
William Coleman - started the Coleman Lamp and Stove Company
John Dillon - founded grocery store company that became Dillons
Alva Duckwall - established company that later became Alco
Olive and Ray Garvey - pioneered the style of large-scale corporate farming
Moses Grinter - trading post and ferry operator in Kansas Indian Territory
Junius Groves - known as the "Potato King of the World"
Fred Harvey* - created the Harvey House restaurant chain
Cyrus K. Holiday* - organized the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Alexander Hyde - started soap business in Wichita that became the Mentholatum Company
William Lear, Sr. - founded Lear Jet Corporation
H. D. Lee - established a clothing line including Lee Rider Jeans
Rafael and Concepción Lopez - opened Connie's Mexico Café in Wichita
William Mathewson - established Wichita Savings Bank
*Joseph McCoy - established Abilene as the railhead for cattle drives
Mitsugi Ohno - made glassware for researchers and artistic purposes
John Fenton Pratt - sheep rancher, adapted traditional English ranching to high plains
*C. B. Schmidt - land agent for the Santa Fe railway influenced German Mennonites to settle in Kansas
Harry Sinclair - formed Sinclair Oil, major oil producer
Lloyd Stearman - flew seaplanes in Navy; became president of Lockheed Corporation
Russell and Clara Stover - Founders of Russell Stover Candies and "Eskimo Pie"
Bernhard Warkentin - imported Turkey Red wheat, staple for Kansas farmers

Explorers:

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado - one of the first European to visit Kansas
Ron Evans - astronaut; Apollo 17 crewmember
Martin and Osa Johnson - explored Africa
Clyde Tombaugh - astronomer that discovered planet Pluto

Inventors and Innovators:

Charlie Angell, Sr. - invented the one-way disc plow
William Coleman - invented the Coleman Arc Lamp
George Washington Carver - famed botantist
Takeru Higuchi - KU chemist who developed slow-release time medicines
Jack Kilby* - invented the microchip

Medical field:

Mary Ann Bickerdyke - built hospitals during Civil War
Samuel Crumbine - public health reformer
Takeru Higuchi - KU chemist who developed slow-release time medicines
Karl Menninger* - founded Menninger Clinic in Topeka; nationally recognized leader in psychiatry
Earl Sutherland, Jr. - Nobel Prize-winning hormone researcher
Lucy Hobbs Taylor - first female dentist in Kansas

Military:

William Cody - soldier and buffalo hunter
Harry Walter Colmery - American Legion National Commander, 1936-1937
George Custer - commander of Seventh Cavalry
John Denny - Buffalo Soldier in U.S. Army; Recipient of Medal of Honor
Peggy Hull Deuell - woman war correspondent on four battlefronts
Bob Dole* - World War II veteran
Dwight Eisenhower* - Commander of the allied forces in Europe in WW II
Frederick Funston - fought in Spanish American War; commanded Fort Leavenworth military college
Dioniso Campos Garcia - World War II
William Matthews - recruited members to the First Colored Kansas Volunteer Infantry
William Tecumseh Sherman - General commander of the U.S. Army during the Civil War

Musicians:

Teresa Cuevas - formed Mariachi Estrella, an all-female mariachi band
Coleman Hawkins - known as the father of the saxophone
Eva Jessye - choral trainer for Porgy and Bess; led Eva Jessye Choir on tour of Europe
Stan Kenton - jazz pianist; developed wall of sound jazz style
Charlie Parker - influential jazz musician

Photographer:

Gordon Parks* - Nationally recognized

Politics and Government:

Henry Allen - governor of Kansas
Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker* - first woman to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate
Arthur Capper* - first native Kansan to be elected governor of the state.
Frank Carlson - U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator and governor of Kansas
Mabel Chase - one of the first elected female sheriffs in U.S.
Harry W. Colmery - responsible for the G.I. Bill
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado - governor of Spanish-ruled Mexico
Samuel Crumbine* - Kansas' first Secretary of Health
Charles Curtis* - First American Indian Vice President of U.S.
Annie Diggs - Promoted People's Party (Populists)
Bob Dole* - U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate
Dwight Eisenhower* - 34th President of U.S.
Milton Eisenhower - assistant to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under three presidents
Alfred Fairfax - first African American to serve in the Kansas Legislature
Joan Finney - first woman governor of Kansas
Dionisio Campos Garcia - mayor of Garden City
Georgia Neese Gray - first woman U.S. Treasurer
Minnie Grinstead - first woman elected to the Kansas Legislature
Cyrus Holliday* - served as adjutant general and state senator; donated land for capitol grounds
John Ingalls - U.S. senator, coined state motto
Lucy Johnston - organized most of Kansas into workable districts
William Johnston - chief justice of Kansas Supreme Court
Alf Landon* - governor of Kansas and presidential candidate
James Lane - one of the state's first U.S. Senators
Lorenzo Lewelling - first Populist governor in Kansas
Edward McCabe - state auditor; first African American to hold statewide office in a northern state
Kathryn O'Loughlin McCarthy - first woman from Kansas elected to serve in U.S. Congress
Clarina Nichols - campaigned for women to vote in school elections
Kate Richards O'Hare - first woman to run for U.S. Senate
William Peffer - first Populist U.S. Senator
Andrew Reeder - first governor of Kansas Territory
Charles Robinson - first governor of the State of Kansas
Susanna Salter - first woman mayor in the U.S.
Jerry Simpson - member of the Kansas People's Party
*William Allen White - advisor to many politicians; ran for governor of Kansas in 1924
Elizabeth Wooster - first woman elected to serve statewide public office

Scientists:

George Washington Carver - found more than 300 uses for the peanut
Mitsugi Ohno - proved a physics theory by creating Klein bottle (blown glassware)
George Sternberg* - Internationally recognized paleontologist
Waldo Wedel - Smithsonian archeologist

Writers:

Gwendolyn Brooks - Pulitzer Prize winning poet
Peggy Hull Deuell - wrote about soldiers in WW I
Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius - published Appeal to Reason Socialist newspaper and created Little Blue Books
Langston Hughes - one of the Harlem Renaissance writers in the 1920s
William Inge - Pulitzer and Oscar winning playwright
Martin and Osa Johnson - wrote books and made movies about their African safaris
Julia Louisa Lovejoy - wrote letters to eastern newspapers about violence in Kansas Territory
Karl Menninger* - wrote The Human Mind and The Crime of Punishment
Oscar Micheaux -wrote The Case of Mrs. Wingate, a national bestseller
Clementine Paddleford - considered "America's number one food editor"
Gordon Parks* - wrote The Learning Tree
Sara Robinson - wrote Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life, an antislavery book
Charles Sheldon* - wrote In His Steps
William Stafford - published 57 volumes of poetry
Rex Stout - crime writer and creator of Nero Wolfe
May Williams Ward - poet and editor of The Harp, a poetry magazine
Eugene Ware - gifted poet
William Allen White* - editor of Emporia Gazette; wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas"
William Lindsay White - war correspondent editor of Emporia Gazette
Laura Ingalls Wilder - wrote Little House on the Prairie - about her experience in Kansas