Site Visit: The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes

The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in downtown
Fort Scott, KS

The town of Fort Scott is home not only to a National Historic Site, but home to a unique museum. The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes sits in downtown. It was created as a result of an extraordinary chain of events starting back in 1999. In that year a teacher in Uniontown, KS, near Fort Scott, gave his students an assignment for National History Day. They found a newspaper clipping about a woman, Irena Sendler, who had saved over 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during German occupation. As they delved into Irena's story they decided to make a play based on her efforts and highlight her courage and accomplishments. When they discovered that she was still living, they made efforts to contact her and then as time went on, to eventually meet with her. The teacher partnered with Lowell Milken, an international businessman and philanthropist who supported the play called "Life in a Jar" and established the Lowell Milken Center to bring to light unsung heroes from all over the world that teach compassion, respect, and understanding. The Center encourages educators and students to create projects that tell their selected heroes' stories through performances, exhibits, websites, documentaries, or other forms of art medium and share them with the world. Some of these projects receive prizes and further recognition. The new center has many of these former projects and exhibitions on display.

The inside of the Lowell Milken Center

One Unsung Hero project had some resonance with my background. Called the Adam Shoemaker project, it highlighted Adam Shoemaker's influence over a young Abraham Lincoln. Shoemaker was a teacher, preacher, and abolitionist who had settled in southern Indiana, not far from where the Lincolns had their homestead and he preached in the church where the Lincolns attended. Having been to Lincoln's boyhood home and worked at his birthplace, I saw a thread connecting Shoemaker, Lincoln, the Lowell Milken Center at Fort Scott, and myself. Lincoln credits Shoemaker as having an early influence upon his views of opposing slavery.

The Center also highlights the roles of Ken Reinhardt and Ann Williams and their friendship to Elizabeth Eckford. Ms. Eckford was one of the Little Rock Nine who broke the color barrier of segregation by attending the formerly all-white high school in 1957. While not diminishing the courage or the hardships of the Little Rock Nine, the project focused on Reinhardt's hardships being a white student who had to face hatred and discrimination as well from his fellow white students. In spite of peer pressure and intimidation, Ken Reinhardt and Ann Williams, another white student, helped Eckford and other black students in their classes through their year at school before it was shut down.

"What do you stand for?" is a call
to action on the part of the visitor

One of the distinguishing features of the Center was its use of interpretive techniques. While it is informative and illuminating to read and experience the stories of unsung heroes getting a little light to shine in, the heroes each have a simple common theme: they saw something wrong and did something about it. Some of the things they did had great consequences, others had subtle and personal meaning, but all did something that changed the way things were for the better. The main exhibit area charges visitors with an interpretive technique called "Call to Action". A large poster for portraits and selfies asks visitors, "What do you stand for?" Essentially, it overtly asks the visitors what they believe and what they choose to do about it. Faced with an injustice, will the visitors be bystanders or will they act on their beliefs? "Call to Action" is a tremendous interpretive technique that can powerfully conclude an interpretive program and provoke the visitors with the information presented to them in a manner that they must address within themselves. In all the projects the students' pursuit of the stories makes them personal and therefore meaningful projects; there are so many unsung heroes out there, but why they are important to the investigating students is a matter of interpreting those stores in meaningful ways.

Much of the Center exhibits are flat panel pictures and text, which can be wearisome after a while. Big text and pictures and the inclusion of mixed art pieces bring the interest back up; some artifacts are used and some tactile objects are available, but the site has a decidedly 'adult' feel that children may not respond to very well. Indeed, many of the themes of the projects are real world problems that adults and some children have to deal with that can be scary, but by and large, children may have some trouble with the content and presentations of the Center. The Center also utilizes some of the vacant downtown storefronts with standing posters exhibiting other unsung heroes. The Lowell Milken Center is an excellent use of time if people  have a free morning or afternoon to visit while they are in southeastern Kansas and want to know more about the good that is being done around the world, and is an excellent interpretive museum.

You can find more information about the Lowell Milken Center at this link: https://www.lowellmilkencenter.org/