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Nellie Cline

Nellie Cline, a native of Larned, Pawnee County, served in the Kansas House of Representatives from 1921 to 1924. She is also credited with being the first female lawyer to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court.

Lutie A. Lytle

Portrait of Lutie Lytle, one of the nation's earliest African American female lawyers. Her family came to Topeka and lived at 1435 Monroe Street and Lutie and her brothers attended Topeka schools, including Topeka High School. Lytle graduated from Central Tennessee College and was admitted to the Criminal Court in Memphis, Tennessee, after passing an oral exam. She is reported to be the first African American woman to be licensed to practice in Tennessee, and third in the United States. After returning to Topeka, she became the first African American woman admitted to the Kansas bar. This portrait was copied from A New Negro for a New Century.

Amelia Earhart

This photograph shows aviator Amelia Earhart on a parade float at a homecoming parade in Atchison, Kansas. A native of Atchison, Kansas, Earhart spoke at Memorial Hall to a crowd of 3,500 people during her visit. Earhart set a record flying solo across the Atlantic in her Lockheed Vega. She made the 14-hour, 56-minute flight from Newfoundland to Ireland in May 1932. Earlier, she had been the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a passenger in a plane.

Amelia Earhart

This is an informal photograph of Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937. She is seated between two women on a parade float in Atchison, Kansas. The two women may be Barbara and Lorraine Hellener, daughters of the City Manager, Earl Hellener. Also visible are the float's driver, spectators, and parked automobiles along the city street. A native of Atchison, Earhart spoke at Memorial Hall to a crowd of 3,500 people during her visit. The parade was June 7, 1935.

Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance, 1909-1979, was a well-known actress born Vivian Roberta Jones in Cherryvale in Montgomery County, Kansas. As a young child, Vance moved to Independence, Kansas where she found her love of acting under the tutelage of playwright William Inge. Her most famous role was as Ethel Mertz on the television show "I Love Lucy" with Lucille Ball.

Nancy Landon Kassebaum

A portrait of Nancy Landon Kassebaum, United States Senator from Kansas, 1978-1997, and the daughter of Kansas Governor Alfred Mossiman Landon.

Mary Elizabeth Lease

Deane

Mary Elizabeth (Clyens) Lease is perhaps the best-known Kansas Populist. She was born in Pennsylvania on September 11, 1850 to Irish immigrants. At the age of twenty she moved to Osage Mission, Kansas, in order to teach school at St. Anne?s Academy. While there, she met and married Charles L. Lease, a local pharmacist. After several unsuccessful attempts at farming, Lease turned her attention to the plight of her fellow farmers, and by 1890, her passionate criticisms of railroads and big business made her a formidable force in the newly formed People's (Populist) Party. She became a well-known lecturer for the Populist cause, traveling throughout the West, Midwest, and South. Although this statement has in fact been misattributed to her, she is most known for her assertion that farmers must "raise less corn and more hell.? Her zeal and refusal to compromise eventually alienated her from mainstream Populists, and by 1896 she had turned her attention toward other reform causes, including prohibition and suffrage. She divorced Charles in 1902, spending the remainder of her life living with various children on the Atlantic coast. She passed away on October 29, 1933 in New York state.

Minnie Johnson Grinstead

This is a portrait of Mineola "Minnie" Tamar Johnson Grinstead, 1869-1925, who was the first woman elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. Grinstead served from 1919 to 1923 as the representative from Liberal in Seward County, Kansas.

Sara Robinson

Portrait of Sara Tappan Doolittle Robinson, author, Free-State activist, and wife of Charles Robinson. This photograph was copied from an ambrotype taken in 1857. See Kansas Memory item 3996 for a color version.

Cowboys in Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory

Steele, F. M. (Francis Marion), 1866-1936

View of Lon Ford (left) and Pearl Gillian (right, from Englewood, Kansas) on horses and leading pack animals. They were getting ready for a round-up in the eastern part of Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory.