From political firsts to cultural icons, these Kansans challenged the limits of their time—leaving legacies that still shape the state and the nation.
Charles Curtis
1860-1936
Few vice presidents are remembered beyond their time in office, but that doesn’t make their contributions any less significant. Curtis, who served as President Herbert Hoover’s vice president, broke racial barriers as the first person of color to be vice president and the only vice president known to have Native American heritage.
Curtis was a member of the Kaw Nation. After his mother died when he was three and his father joined the Union Army, his Native American grandmother took him in, and he lived with her on a reservation in Council Grove. She later sent him to live with his white grandmother in Topeka so that she could support his education.
Everything he achieved, Curtis later said, he owed to his French-Kaw grandmother. At 21, he passed the bar and served as an attorney for Shawnee County. Kansans later elected him to Congress, where he served in the House of Representatives for 14 years. This led to a seat in the United States Senate for an additional 20 years, where he became the Senate’s first official majority leader. Then in 1928, he sought the Republican nomination for president, but ended up as Hoover’s running mate.
His legacy, however, is not without its complexities. As a senator, he sponsored the Curtis Act of 1898, which undermined Native American sovereignty by abolishing tribal courts and placed residents of tribal lands under federal law. As a child, Curtis was forced to choose between his two cultures. When he lived with his white grandmother, he was taught that the best way for Native Americans to succeed was to assimilate—a belief he held through adulthood.
But Curtis also advocated for granting U.S. citizenship to Native Americans and was a strong champion of women’s rights. He introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in the Senate in 1923. After the Hoover-Curtis term ended in 1933, Curtis returned to law and practiced in Washington, D.C., until his death.
Clarina Irene Howard Nichols
1810-1885
While Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s roles in the women’s suffrage movement are well-known, few know of Nichols’ efforts. Nicknamed the “Forgotten Feminist of Kansas,” Nichols led the successful fight for women’s first voting right in the state—a ballot in school board elections.
Nichols, who was originally from Vermont, had three children with her first husband. But due to his emotional abuse, she divorced him and took her children to her parents’ home. She began work as a reporter for the Windham County Democrat, where she met George Nichols, the newspaper’s editor and publisher. The two married after her divorce was final. During this time, Nichols wrote about women’s rights, drawing on her understanding of how divorce laws unfairly favored men in matters related to their children. Over the years, as George’s health failed, she quietly became editor.
She moved to Kansas after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed Kansas settlers to decide whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. As a staunch abolitionist, she was determined to fight for the rights of both women and Black individuals. She moved to Lawrence with her two older sons in October 1854, then later brought her husband and their young son to Kansas.
In 1855, her advocacy for women’s rights earned her an invitation to speak on the issue at the proposed Free-State Constitutional Convention in Topeka. Her husband’s death prevented her from appearing.
Despite this missed opportunity, Nichols used her platform to convince Kansas representatives to include a number of women’s rights in the Kansas Constitution, such as the right to own property outright, to gain custody of their children in cases of divorce, and to vote in school board elections.
In 1856, at the instance of Horace Greeley, Nichols spent about two months lecturing in western New York for the Kansas National Aid Committee and organizing women’s relief efforts. She won over audiences, especially the men, with her keen sense of humor and less strident delivery than that of other contemporary feminists. Preachers, whom she often debated, appreciated her ability to quote Bible passages.
Nichols devoted the rest of her life to advocating for women’s rights. She left Kansas in 1872 for California, where she continued the fight until her death in 1885.
Hattie McDaniel
1893-1952
McDaniel delivered an outstanding performance in Gone with the Wind, winning the 1940 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and making history as the first African American to win the award. But her talent was not limited to the silver screen. She was a skilled comedienne, singer, songwriter and dancer with big dreams.
Born in Wichita, McDaniel was raised by her parents, who had formerly been enslaved. Despite her mother’s protests, McDaniel dropped out of high school her sophomore year to pursue a career as an entertainer. She traveled with her father and brother’s minstrel show and sometimes performed with a comedy group. In 1931, she moved to California to try her luck in the film industry. Unfortunately, most roles for people of color were either enslaved people or servants. She earned minor roles in several movies, but her big break came when she landed the role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind.
McDaniel also faced criticism from the Black community for this role because it played into racial stereotypes. She quieted critics by saying, “I’d rather play a maid for $700 a week than be one for $7.”
With segregation still prevalent across the country, McDaniel and the other Black cast members were not allowed to attend the movie’s premiere in Atlanta. When she was nominated for an Academy Award, she was forced to seek special permission to attend the event, which was held at a “whites only” hotel in Los Angeles. She was not permitted to sit with her white cast members and was required to use a separate entrance.
Following the success of Gone with the Wind, McDaniel went on to build a long and fruitful career. During World War II, she starred in several films a year and organized entertainment for Black soldiers. She performed on the radio and, in 1947, landed the lead role in the radio version of The Beulah Show, which, in 1950, became the first television sitcom to star an African American actress, a role originated by Ethel Waters.
McDaniel died from breast cancer at age 59. Her wish to be buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery was denied due to her race. In 1999, the cemetery’s new owner sought to fix the past owner’s mistakes and offered to move her remains. Her family didn’t want her disinterred, so the cemetery erected a beautiful pink marble memorial in its scenic Garden of Legend to honor McDaniel and her legacy.
Langston Hughes
1902-1967
Hughes is well known for shaping American literature with his influential books, plays and jazz poetry. He became known as the “Poet Laureate of Harlem” early in his career and was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
His first book, Not Without Laughter (1930), was a semi-autobiographical novel that featured several characters based on his memories of living in Lawrence. He spent much of his childhood in Kansas with his maternal grandmother, who was a great influence on his life. She taught him about the Kansas-Missouri border war and its historic consequences.
In 1932, he traveled to the Soviet Union to film Black and White, which aimed to show the racial discrimination prevalent in the American South and in the American film industry. Although the production was canceled, Hughes briefly stayed in the Soviet Union and traveled to other parts of the world. He returned home with a broader international perspective.
In his autobiographical novel I Wonder as I Wander, he recounts a lesson he learned from his grandmother, who once gave him a bruised apple he did not want to eat. “My grandmother said, ‘What’s the matter with you, boy? You can’t expect every apple to be a perfect apple. Just because it’s got a speck on it, you want to throw it away. Bite that speck out and eat that apple, son. It’s still a good apple,’” he writes. “That’s the way the world is, I thought, if you bite the specks out, it’s still a good apple.”
That optimistic attitude is reflected in his poem “Youth”: “We have tomorrow / bright before us / like a flame.” Hughes carved a legacy for himself, becoming the first Black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Through his writing, he was a powerful voice of the Black American experience and inspired generations of activism. Almost 60 years after his death, Hughes’ words remain timeless.
