Axe News
Black History & Southeast Kansas Entertainment
Although Southeast Kansas is best known for its mining industry and fried chicken, Southeast Kansas is also rich with entertainers who made a career from the early through mid-20th century in stage, film and radio. The new exhibit in Special Collections, Axe Library, entitled “Southeast Kansans in Stage, Radio, and Film,” features six influential entertainers from this region: Carson Robison, Zasu Pitts, Dr. Eva Jessye, Louise Brooks, Gordon Parks, and William Inge.
Carson Robison (Oswego & Chetopa) was well-known for his New York radio show and for composing topical songs during World War II. Zasu Pitts (Parsons) made over 500 films during her career, including Greed (1924) and many comedy shorts. Dr. Eva Jessye (Coffeyville) and the Eva Jessye Choir traveled world-wide and also cast in the original Broadway and touring productions of George Gershwin’s production, Porgy and Bess(1935). Louise Brooks was best known for her work in the 1929 German films, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Gordon Parks (Fort Scott) wrote a fictional autobiography, The Learning Tree (1963), of his early childhood years in Fort Scott. He later turned his book into a screenplay and filmed the movie of the same title on location in Bourbon County. William Inge (Independence) began his career in teaching and was also a drama critic prior to writing his most successful plays and screenplays, Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1953), Bus Stop (1955), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957), and Splendor in the Grass (1961).
