Award-winning author and journalist Mark McCormick recently released a new collection of stories called Kansas Matters. KMUW’s Carla Eckels sat down with McCormick to ask him about his work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you come up with the title “Kansas Matters?”
I have a wonderful publisher, Blue Cedar Press, run by Mike Pogue and Gretchen Eick. They're more than dear friends; they're family to me, and they follow my work.
They felt that the columns had a certain weight that could carry a book. In terms of a title, I was thinking about “Broad Sympathy for Some.” It was a quotation aimed at our racial differences in the country — that we have broad sympathy for some and broad skepticism for others. I think that also works in terms of our politics because we're so tribal.
But Gretchen, Mike and Laura Tillem thought the book had more range than that. There's a piece in there about Quindaro, the Civil War-era settlement on the Kansas side of the Kansas River in the Kansas City area. It was a place where people came to freedom from Missouri. I had a professor at the University of Kansas, who was the head of the African American Studies Department, say that he thought Quindaro was the best example of a multiracial democracy.
Quindaro was started by freed Black men and women, abolitionists from Massachusetts, and Wyandot Indians. You think about the foundation on which our state was built. I'm not sure a lot of people here appreciate the kind of history that we have and how important it was. It would be very difficult to tell the American story without Bleeding Kansas, for example.
There's a play on words with “Kansas Matters.” We believe that Kansas matters, from this historical sense. But these are also matters that happen in Kansas and are of concern. That's how we landed on the title.
What is it about these unreported stories that you think need to be told?
I think if you're talking about history — not nostalgia — you're talking about our connection civically. Taylor Branch, one of my favorite authors and historians, says that history is the language of civics. It's hard to navigate history and civics without that history.
You're telling your own story and how you arrived at the place that you're sitting now, and you need that history to even chart where you're headed. It's just that important. It's not just about factoids. It's about how our society was shaped and by what rules our society was shaped.
I've been concerned about the mood in the country where people feel as though there are aspects of our history that need to be hidden. I think just the opposite. There's so much to learn from our history.
Why was it important to include Jo Brown, the Black woman on the Wichita School Board in this work?
She's probably different from every other person in that book to me. She just meant a lot to me personally, and she meant a lot to me professionally as well.
This was someone who really spoke truth to power. She came to my high school and spoke once, and she talked about the practice of swimming pool privileges that African Americans didn't really have until maybe Friday, after everybody had swum. The pools would be cleaned and refilled.
In that moment, I didn't realize it then — I was still in high school — but she was pivotal in my development. If you're a journalist and your currency is truth, she was formative for me.
There were times when I was writing things that I knew people didn't like, things that would upset them, but I felt like they were important to say. I'm not saying that I lacked fear. I was very fearful. I got a lot of hate mail and a lot of hate calls.
I can't tell you how many times I sat there at the keyboard wondering if I had the courage to do it. And I would think about Jo Brown and say, “Yeah, this is what Jo would want me to do.” She was my example. She was a courageous person.
What is the one message you would want to convey to readers who pick up this book?
Maybe the lives that we lead really should be more complex than we like them to be. We shouldn't have to have answers for absolutely everything, and I think we should be delving much deeper.
I have a real concern generally about how our society approaches the idea of harm. We don't tend to think about that.
I spent some time working for a nonprofit that helped free innocent people from prison. Through my work with individuals there, especially the exonerees, it seemed to me that we don't understand what we're doing to human beings when we lock them up that way, when we put them in solitary confinement for long periods of time.
We need to be purposeful and intentional about the ramifications of what we do and what we say. We may pass a bill without really thinking about the impact it's going to have on someone — whether they get a meal today or not, whether they get a hug today or not, whether they feel like they're a part of society or not.
After writing this book, has your own view of Kansas changed?
I can't say that it has. I will say that my pride for what this state has stood for has deepened.
Growing up here, I got the sense that people had an inferiority complex — not just about Wichita, but about the state. And what I've found through doing all this reading and research is that there's so much history here.
There's a Stearman plane hanging from the ceiling of the National Museum of African American History and Culture that was flown by some of the Tuskegee Airmen. We have the Dockum sit-in, Bleeding Kansas, Nicodemus, Gordon Parks, Gwendolyn Brooks, Aaron Douglas. There's just so much history there about us.
It really straightened my back up quite a bit. I'm proud of what this place has contributed to what we're calling our democracy.
Why do you think it's important to “swim,” as you mention in your book and how does that relate to the story of Emmett Till?
I read a book by Wright Thompson called “The Barn.” The barn where Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and killed is still standing in Mississippi. I caught an interview with Wright Thompson, and he said that people who had talked to him about the book were saying it seemed like, in our country, people were dreaming about a pre-civil-rights America.
He was on the bank of the Tallahatchie River, which they call the Singing River because so many bodies had been thrown into that river. He made the point that there are people today who want all those civil-rights advances back in the river.
I thought that was so powerful, and I used that idea in some public remarks I was making.
They want that history, and all the remedies created because of it, back on the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. Right now, we must be willing to sacrifice for gains we may never see, for people we don't even know.
True generosity is planting a tree whose shade you'll never get to experience.
People in the civil-rights movement faced fire hoses with streams at 100 pounds per square inch, powerful enough to break ribs and rip hair from the scalp, because they wanted something better for the next generation.
My friend Judy Sherry said, “I'm not mad at the single mom working three jobs for not being here today. She's trying to survive.” But Judy said, “We need to help her. We have a responsibility to her.”
(Reading an excerpt from book) This is why I'm asking you to swim. This is why we need you to swim. Swim to the banks, all of you, and increase your numbers and raise your voices. Swim out to those floating blissfully unaware and lead them to shore and into this movement. Swim to those who are drowning and drag them to shore.
Swim to groups like Boots on the Ground Midwest, and give them your time, your talent, your treasure. Not everybody can give the same thing, but everybody can give something.
We know you may have to swim through some stiff currents trying to pull you under. We know the water is murky and cold. We realize it's a long distance, but swim. Swim as hard as you can. Get out of the river before our democracy sinks.
As a journalist, what's the story that you haven't told that you look forward to telling?
There are a few, but my parents have a connection to Bowley, Oklahoma. Back in, I believe, 1932, Pretty Boy Floyd's gang — not Floyd himself, but his gang — came to Bowley to rob the bank.
My grandfather, Joseph Langston McCormick, and his brother, H.C. McCormick, led a group of citizens who poured fire on the bank, and they stopped the gang. I've grown up with all this history, all those stories. I actually have one of the weapons that was taken off the bank robbers.
I'm not a gun person, but it's a family heirloom.
I've never felt that my talent level was ready for a story that important to me. But I'm almost 60, and if I'm not ready now, I'm not going to be ready. That's been a lifelong hope of mine — to really sink my teeth into that story. And I got a lot of it from firsthand conversations with my dad and others.
Left on Read bookstore will host an author event with Mark McCormick on Saturday, September 19, from 1-3 pm.
