Even before Kansas became a state on Jan. 29, 1861, journalists and editors were reporting stories about their communities’ development and challenges, such as the bloody, divisive fight over slavery.
Over the decades, the state has produced lots of great journalists, including many who worked in Kansas and some who left.
In honor of Kansas Day, here are snippets about three extraordinary journalists who hailed from Kansas.
Peggy Hull
The first woman accredited by the United States as a war correspondent was born Henrietta Eleanor Goodnough on a farm near Bennington, Kansas, in 1889.
Before she was 30 she had worked for newspapers in Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Hawaii and California.
She had also covered the U.S. Army’s pursuit of Pancho Villa along the Texas-Mexico border in 1916, although the military would not allow her to travel with Army troops. In 1917 she traveled to Paris to cover World War I, although the War Department refused her credentials because she was a woman.
She did, however, use connections she had forged while in Texas to gain access to training bases in Europe. Her reports were so popular that jealous male reporters in Paris complained until authorities withdrew her access to troops.
Hull didn’t give up. She traveled back to the United States, and she won accreditation in 1918. She went on to cover Japan’s attack on Shanghai, China, in 1932, and to serve as a World War II correspondent in the Pacific theater.
She died in 1967 in California.
William Allen White
Like many newspaper owners of his time, William Allen White was an active politician.
He used the Emporia Gazette, which he bought in 1895 for $3,000, to criticize Democrats, Populists, racists and regressive policies. He battled the Ku Klux Klan and promoted Republicans such as Teddy Roosevelt.
He actively worked to elect Republicans in Kansas and nationally from the 1890s to the end of his life. But he ran for governor as an independent in 1924 because the GOP nominee was too cozy with the Klan.
He won a Pulitzer prize for a 1923 editorial about free speech.
