Born in (the) #LFK

Hello, hello, hello. Okay, cool. Yeah, uh so thank you very much for asking. It's lovely. Uh uh I had the good fortune of working like what ten feet away from while Django was being done And so it was lovely. To me, it was like a wonderful tool. The moment it was there, I was like, can we do this? Can we do that? Can we do this? Can we do that? And I'm sure I annoyed the heck out of the people. who made it. But it was lovely. So yes, Lawrence. Greetings from Lawrence, Kansas. Why Lawrence, Kansas, is essentially that's what Jeff asked me. It's like people see the LFK hashtag. What is it about Lawrence such that here is where uh Django might have been created? And I'm gonna submit that you already know more

about What's come out of Lawrence, Kansas, then you probably realize. It was started in the midst uh at the beginning actually before the Civil War, Lawrence was. Uh quick history, Kansas-Nebraska Act. Uh Congress said you can be a new state and people on the ground are gonna vote whether or not you're gonna be a slave state or a free state. So the New England Emigrant Aid uh Company, I love their sign there up one flight. That should be a motto for something. Um they funded people to come to Lawrence. Lawrence is named after Uh Amos Lawrence, Massachusetts Street is named after his home state. Here's a funny uh It's not funny. Uh it's an interesting little uh poster.

It looks like sheet music, I think. It's something telling people to this is a song and scholars now believe also it influenced the b uh the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. So It's pretty fascinating. This is the man himself for whom our uh city is named after. Um again it was uh it was in the middle of uh what were was to become the Civil War. The Civil War started here. The Civil War actually elements of it are within 150 feet of we where we are right now. Um uh this is uh you know this is what they thought we were doing forcing slavery down the throat of uh free soilers The Sack of Lawrence, 1856. This guy, he's later.

He's a reb who came and Burn the the place down. But uh uh Lawrence became what was going on in Lawrence became the Civil War. Um the sack of Lawrence was intended one of the intentions they had was destroying this newspaper's office, the Herald of Freedom. You might have seen a plaque right uh on the corner of this building. Uh this is where the Herald of Freedom uh published. One of the things they wanted to do, and they did do when they came and sacked Lawrence, the Missourians, and to this day, you know, I don't know personally, I'm not a fan of Missourians. But uh Uh I mean you can't get over that slave stuff, right? Uh it's hard. Uh so they came into town, they wanted to burn down the city, which they did.

They burned down the Eldridge Hotel. I don't know if anybody's staying there. It's right over there. And one of the greatest stories about this is they took the printing presses from the Herald Freedom and dumped them into the river right down the way. The townspeople went and got the type, the lead type, from the printing press and turned it into bullets and cannonballs. and fired it back afterwards at those people and they would say, here comes another edition of the Herald of Freedom. Astounding. So here's some images of this is the sack of Lawrence. What were they trying to do? They were trying to burn the abolitionist newspapers and shut them down. They were trying to kill the uh uh male uh residents so that they couldn't vote to be a free state. Here's a lovely little shot too. Uh it's hard to see a lot, but Liberty Hall, that's where we are.

That's the big building uh uh in the center of the photo, and that's one of those lovely imposed photos showing where the Herald of Freedom was. This is what was left of Lawrence after they Burned it a couple times. Um John Brown, another person uh you might not have heard of, uh but you certainly heard of what uh the effects are in terms of like the American Civil War. Uh here's a uh fascinating Oh, that's the wrong photo of him. Uh that's that's in the news center. That's a lovely little thing. Hopefully it's right over here. Hopefully you'll see it. This is a very famous painting of him. Uh he's yeah, he's uh he was like no slavery. So the Civil War, that's what it led to. Let's see.

Some more things about Lawrence. This man on the right is named George Walker. He's right there. This group, this duo right here are the first African-American media superstars in the United States. And he was born in Lawrence. He's buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. He isn't uh which is what way? That way. Um he's not recognized yet. Uh I just learned about this guy Thursday uh and actually we're gonna talk to some people and see if if he can get uh so that people will know he's here. Um they were a vaudeville troupe. They had the first black production uh of a Broadway show uh in this guy's in the guy on the right uh George's house if you've ever heard of uh Langston Hughes They used

in uh the apartment in New York they used to get together. Langston Hughes uh grew up in Lawrence as well, uh had a lot to do with the Harlem Renaissance if you've never if you've many people familiar with the Harlem Renaissance. It was a movement in the 20s uh by African Americans. I would look it up. It's uh it's another way that Lawrence has impacted things. Uh another fun one, this guy's actually a Canadian, but we don't talk about that. That is uh James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. And what's lovely is, and he came here and in fact that's isn't that like what is that, Fraser Hall behind him there? Something like that. In Lawrence, they still hadn't figured out the rules yet for basketball, so it was seen as kind of like a thing for couples to do out on a date.

That's a lie. That's his wife there. So basketball, I mean the rules to basketball are still in Lawrence, Kansas. It's a multi-gillion dollar worldwide industry now. Just another thing to show, it's like what happens when you bring transplants to Lawrence and let them do cool things. That's one of them. We wouldn't have Will Chamberlain without uh Naismith coming to Lawrence, which means we would not have Michael Jordan think about that. Just let that, you know, without Lawrence Kansas, and Roy Williams admitted this because well he didn't admit it. He he brought Laura uh he was helpful bringing uh Jordan to North Carolina but then when he came here he kind of validated the whole thing Something you might not think about

too. There was a movie filmed here in uh that was shown on TV in uh 1983. It was called The Day After. Are you familiar with it at all? That's a nice little slide from it. That's like on the highway looking towards Kansas City when they blow up Kansas City. Here's a lovely shot from it's a still I think from the production and this is two blocks, that's ninth street. Um it's a funny thing too, you see the the column right there, the white column. You can see that the window is still in the uh I'm sorry, the glass is still in the window there. That's because Because the guy was like, no, you can't ruin my store. So there's been an explosion of an atomic bomb, and the glass is still there. Maybe that uh Maybe that actually would happen.

So the night uh before the movie aired, it was uh screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff The director recalls I had somebody I knew in the room who said, if you thought they were going to snicker or pick it apart, you were mistaken. They sat there like they were turned to stone. This is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Watching the movie. The director goes on, the making of the film was to date the most worthwhile thing I ever got to do in my life. Any movie that's The President of the United States winds up saying changed his mind about the idea of a winnable nuclear war is not an insignificant achievement. I would agree with that, wouldn't we? Uh the Reagan administration came in thinking, and this is a historical record, they came in thinking about acceptable numbers of nuclear casualties. Uh his memoirs reveal what he had to say about the effects of what the day after

had on his thinking. And then uh later on uh when he signed uh the intermediate range weapon agreement at Reykjavik with Gorbachev, uh the director got a telegram from his admit from the administration that said, don't think your movie uh didn't have any part of this. Because it did. So that's kind of astounding, really. It's like a movie set in Lawrence. All sorts of locals took part in it. It was hugely important. Another thing, another little orange Lawrence export, Bill James, I don't know if you've heard of him. He uh he invented essentially uh uh what they call money ball, right? Sabermetrics in baseball Uh he went on to uh help I think he first worked with the Red Sox, but the whole idea of looking at stats and how you buy uh

uh players, how you contract with players and everything. completely changed the nature of baseball. And of course without Bill James we would never have uh uh Nate Silver so imagine that work It would be a sad world. Lynx was developed here. When was that? 1990? Yeah, you remember that? When you would fire that up? Does anybody remember testing websites in Lynx? Yes. Sweet. These two guys. Sorry? I don't. No, do you? Yeah. Um let's see. So that was 1992. Uh let's see, uh, which gets us about to the time, and I'm stealing this photo too, where World Online. Uh now The the company uh

the the World Company owned a cable TV franchise in town. They had gotten into that in the 60s I think one of the Simonses, the the uh uh the owners of the company, and as an aside too, I forgot to mention uh one of the Simonses came into Lawrence at around the time of the Herald of Freedom and all of that. With fifty dollars in his pocket, the story goes. He made a newspaper uh and over time it's uh now the journal world. They the company was really astounding. Uh Frank will attest to that. Uh Uh they had a cable franchise which gave them a boatload of cash, right? It really did. And it funded so much. It also it it allowed a newsroom to punch way above its weight by hiring uh These you know, the likes of these guys.

Uh here's the entire team at n does anybody know what year this was? Is any I don't know. I mean Bill Sneed, a photographer For the general world, a famous uh lovely guy took this a long time ago, and there's all sorts of great people. Adrian's in the back, all sorts of people. Simon, you might have been gone by then. Uh but Rob Curley is before I asked Joe. Did he? Yeah. I my memory is hazy. It's so long ago. Um uh so it was uh uh So the company had a history of innovation. When I started working there, there was a guy named Ben Singer who was uh, as I understand it, one of the first people to be doing mod purl. Isn't that right, Frank? And Frank, you came to work at uh the Journal World so that you could see his code, uh, which was great.

Frank and I go way back there. Um so there was a lovely tradition of uh kind of like not knowing what was going on, but just throwing money at it, you know, to let people do stuff. Right? Am I wrong? You know, you know, it's people didn't know what was going on. Nobody knew they were like Adrian was off at his house making jingo what would become Django. Who was it? Dolph, the publisher. Yeah, Dolph Simon's uh senior, I believe, or junior Yeah, dude, because three is the next down. Yeah, yeah, he's in his 90s now, and he would still write his uh on the typewriter. It was wonderful. Um so we had a great history there. Uh Ralph Gage needs to be really powerfully name-checked as well

for what led to the development and the environment that led to the development of Django. He was the general manager for For a long time. I had a great, long uh experience working with him. Not always great. Uh dude was like intense, you know. He was a great uh He was well let's just say he was a great guy. He hires Rob as well. Rob Curly comes. Rob uh heard of Adrian and I'm not really sure how, and maybe this will if Simon, if you're doing Adrian uh You were at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, weren't you? And you did not have access to the they wouldn't let you put your files. You didn't have FTP access, did you? Yeah, he was a programmer and couldn't have server access. I mean, so that's what like how some people were thinking, obviously, and Rob was like, screw that.

And I remember him talking to me and saying, hey, this kid Kids like from he's like from outside Chicago, you're outside Chicago, why don't you talk to him when we come higher and maybe maybe that'll do something. I don't think He did, but he did come. And then, you know, the parade of uh excellent names, Adrian, Simon, Jacob, Matt, Wilson, Dan Cox needs to be uh uh name checked as well for that. So it is absolutely fitting that we're gathered here 10 years later in Lawrence, Kansas, to reflect on Django. Which was first envisioned and put to use in a basement of an old post office maybe two, three hundred feet away from where we're sitting right now. So just to get a sense of that, right there is where we are. Oops, sorry Can you see the little green dot that is Django official green?

That's where we are. That's where Django happened. That's where uh during the Siege of Lawrence, that's right outside. If you would go outside and look into the intersection, that's where cannons were firing at the Eldridge Hotel to destroy it. Right there, uh, which is right probably a hundred and fifty feet that way in the middle of the street, John Brown uh exhorted all sorts of people to uh uh uh protect Lawrence against the pro-slavery people from um Missouri. So uh we're in a pretty historical area here so it's absolutely not surprising to me that uh Yjango happen. Well last thing is you might have seen like the whole LFK.

That's what it really means. Can you see that? That's that baby did not invent it. I wanted to give absolutely a special uh shout out to the woman who did coin it because all sorts of people have stolen it from her. Her name is Leslie Kay, she's a local Laurentian. Uh she does screen printing and stuff like that. She coined and made those first shirts that look like this that say Lawrence fucking Kansas. Can I say that sorry? You can beep it out. My bad. Uh see what? Okay, cool, yeah. Uh So uh and LFK, which is lovely. I mean I f I don't remember what it was for the longest time, but it I we would probably put hashtag Lawrence if we were at the news, right, and wanting to say something about uh uh

what was going on. Now the newspaper itself that use LFK. I love it to you know to as a tag. It's lovely. So I mean that's a hopefully what you get out of this is go if if any of the names you remember anything like that, go look them up. Lawrence is an amazing place. It always has been, hopefully always will be. So it's absolutely fitting that you're all here because of Jenko. Cheers. Suit