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The University of Kansas and the University of Missouri will face off on the gridiron Saturday for the first time in more than a decade. The two schools have a heated rivalry in many aspects, but it has manifested itself through sports, particularly football and basketball, for more than a century.
Each time these two institutions compete, sports writers, broadcasters, university officials, members of the Athletic Departments, coaches and local residents resort to inappropriate, ahistorical Civil War references during the events.
For instance, Kansas, which was ostensibly opposed to slavery, frequently incorporates a scene from the Clint Eastwood film “The Outlaw Josey Wales” as a promotional video. However, it is crucial to recognize that the film is an adaptation of segregationist and white supremacist Asa Earl Carter’s novel “The Rebel Outlaw,” which portrays the Confederacy not as a defender of slavery but rather as a protector against marauding and murderous Union soldiers.
The film is historically inaccurate and serves as an illustration of how the Civil War, race and slavery are distorted in the popular imagination.
Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that Carter was a speechwriter for George Wallace and is credited with, among other things, Wallace’s famous “Segregation now … Segregation tomorrow … Segregation forever” speech.
Additionally, he established his own version of the Ku Klux Klan, known as the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, which, among other actions, assaulted Nat King Cole in 1956.
Given these historical associations and the themes of his work, it raises questions about the appropriateness of Carter’s voice as a representation of the university’s hype campaign before games.
The primary issue arises from the tendency to make casual historical references, which distort our understanding of the past and diminish the historical significance of specific events.
Consider, for instance, William Clarke Quantrill’s raid of Lawrence, a frequently cited reference in these discussions.
Quantrill’s raid occurred several weeks after the Union army emerged victorious in the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg and only months after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, marking a shift in the war’s purpose from preserving the Union to a struggle for freedom and the abolition of slavery.
Quantrill comprehended this transformation and descended on Lawrence, a stronghold of abolitionism, with a force that has been estimated to be approximately 450 irregulars. During the raid, nearly 200 people were slaughtered, resulting in the worst massacre of the war.
Quantrill’s Raid is intrinsically linked to race and slavery, and any attempt to connect the event to a sports rivalry is not only insensitive but also an attempt to misrepresent a historical event that was not racially benign.
This is the crux of the matter: most of the attempts to establish a connection between the rivalry and the Civil War are ignoring or whitewashing the core elements of the fight between the residents of the two states.
The conflict was fundamentally rooted in slavery, racism and white supremacy, and any move to connect a sports rivalry without acknowledging this is not only in poor taste but is also an attempt to erase the actual history of the fight between Missouri and Kansas from the 1850s through the 1870s and, in some instances, for years to follow.
Regrettably, we are witnessing attacks on museums, scholars and academic programs dedicated to educating the public about slavery, racism and white supremacy. It is imperative that we refrain from contributing to the efforts to erase this history by diminishing its significance by casually making ahistorical references to the struggle to abolish slavery and pro-slavers who fought against abolition to a sports rivalry.
Instead, let us focus on the game, cheer for whichever university one wishes, and leave the telling of history to another time and place.
About this column
“The Way of the Wide, Wide World” is a regular column about race, history and politics by Shawn Leigh Alexander, professor of African & African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Alexander is the author of, among other titles, “An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights before the NAACP” (2012) and “W. E. B. Du Bois: An American Intellectual and Activist” (2015). He is also a frequent consultant and contributor on PBS documentaries, including “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” (2019) and “Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights” (2023).
Read more of “The Way of the Wide, Wide World” at this link.
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