Editing Leavenworth, Kansas (section)

==History==
{{See also|History of Kansas}}

Leavenworth, founded in 1854, was the first city incorporated in the territory of Kansas.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.lvks.org/category/?categoryid=3 | title=Visitors | publisher=City of Leavenworth, Kansas | access-date=12 June 2014}}</ref> The city developed south of [[Fort Leavenworth]], which was established as Cantonment Leavenworth in 1827 by Colonel [[Henry Leavenworth]].<ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_eRM1AQAAMAAJ | title=History of Leavenworth County Kansas | publisher=Historical Publishing Company | author=Hall, Jesse A. and Hand LeRoy T. | year=1921 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_eRM1AQAAMAAJ/page/n49 116]}}</ref> Its location on the [[Missouri River]] attracted [[Slavery in the United States|refugee African-American slaves]] in the antebellum years, who were seeking freedom from the slave state of [[Missouri]] across the river. Abolition supporters helped them find refuge. In the years before the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], Leavenworth was a hotbed of anti-slavery and pro-slavery agitation, often leading to open physical confrontations on the street and in public meetings.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}}

On April 3, 1858, the "[[Leavenworth Constitution]]" for the state of Kansas was adopted here. Although the federal government never approved this early version of the state constitution, it was considered one of the most radical of the four constitutions drafted for the new territory because it recognized freed black people as citizens.<ref>{{cite web|title=Kansas Memory, "Leavenworth Constitution"|url=http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/207410|website=Kansas Memory, "Leavenworth Constitution"|publisher=Kansas Historical Foundation|access-date=4 November 2015|ref=DaRT ID: 207410|format=Images of historic documents}}</ref>

Refugee African Americans continued to settle in the city during the war. By 1865, it had attracted nearly one-fifth of the 12,000 black people in the state.<ref name="kshs.org">Richard B. Sheridan, [http://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1999winter_sheridan.pdf "Charles Henry Langston and the African American Struggle in Kansas"], ''Kansas State History'', Winter 1999, accessed 15 December 2008.</ref> In 1866, the 10th Regiment of Cavalry, an all-black unit within the U.S. Army, was stood up at Fort Leavenworth.<ref>{{cite web | title = Tenth Regiment of Cavalry | publisher = [[U.S. Army]] | url = https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-10CV.htm | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071222181421/http://www.history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-10CV.htm | url-status = dead | archive-date = December 22, 2007 | access-date = 2019-04-12}}</ref> [[Charles Henry Langston]] was an African-American leader from Ohio who worked and lived in Leavenworth and northeastern Kansas in the [[Reconstruction era (United States)|Reconstruction era]] and afterward. In Kansas, Langston worked for black suffrage and the right of African Americans to sit on juries, testify in court, and have their children educated in common schools.<ref name="berwanger">{{cite journal|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2717202|jstor=2717202|author=Eugene H. Berwanger|title=Hardin and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of the Reconstruction Era|journal=Journal of Negro History|year=1979|volume=64|issue=Spring 1979|pages=101–115|doi=10.2307/2717202|s2cid=149978378|access-date=19 October 2015}}</ref> African Americans gained suffrage in 1870 after passage of the federal 15th constitutional amendment, and the legislature voted for their right to sit on juries in 1874.<ref name="berwanger"/>

African Americans continued to migrate to the state of Kansas after the war. There were a total of 17,108 African Americans in Kansas in 1870, with 43,107 in 1880, and 52,003 by 1900, most of whom lived in urban areas.<ref name="kshs.org"/>

===20th century to present===
Fred Alexander, a 22-year-old black veteran of the Spanish–American War, was arrested on circumstantial evidence following months of assaults on young white women in late 1900. Witnesses had identified a "large white man" and a "slight black man" as having been seen in the vicinity of the attacks, Police moved him to the penitentiary during questioning, but a lynch mob was forming in Leavenworth.<ref name="alexander"/> The sheriff needed to bring him to Leavenworth for arraignment at the county court. He refused the governor's offer of state militia, and was unable to protect the prisoner. On January 15, 1901, Alexander was taken from jail by a mob of 5,000 people and to the site of the murder of Pearl Forbes, where he was brutally [[Lynching in the United States|lynched]]: burned alive.<ref name="lovett">[https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2010summer_lovett.pdf Christopher Lovett, "A Public Burning: Race, Sex, and the Lynching of Fred Alexander"], Kansas State Historical Society, Summer 2010; accessed 02 June 2018</ref> He protested his innocence to the end. An inquest concluded he had been killed by "persons unknown".

His family refused to claim his body for burial. His father Alfred Alexander, an [[exoduster]], said "The people have mutilated him, now let them bury him."<ref name="alexander"/> The city arranged burial. African Americans in the region were horrified at Alexander's murder by the mob and created the first state chapter of the Afro-American Council, then the only national organization working for civil rights.<ref name="alexander">[https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2456&context=greatplainsquarterly Shawn Leigh Alexander, "Vengeance Without Justice, Injustice Without Retribution/ The Afro-American Council’s Struggle Against Racial Violence"], ''Great Plains Quarterly'', Center for Great Plains Studies, Spring 2007; accessed 02 June 2018</ref> (The [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) was founded a few years later, and absorbed most members of the AAC.)

In 1972 Benjamin Day became the city's first African-American mayor.<ref>{{cite web|title=Benjamin Day Papers|url=http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead/ksrl.kc.daybenjamin.xml;route=ksrlead;brand=ksrlead;query=| website=Benjamin Day Papers| publisher=University of Kansas Libraries | access-date=21 August 2017 }}</ref> Day had been elected to the City Commission one year earlier. Leavenworth appoints its mayor from among the members of the Commission, and Day was named mayor in 1971. Day was a former educator and principal in Leavenworth.

[[Fort Leavenworth]] was located outside the city limits until its territory was annexed by the city on April 12, 1977.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.leagle.com/decision/1977717443FSupp274_1665.xml/UNITED%20STATES%20v.%20CITY%20OF%20LEAVENWORTH,%20KAN. | title=United States v. City of Leavenworth, Kansas | work=Leagle | access-date=12 June 2014}}</ref>

In 2008, an underground series of "vaults" was found in the city, apparently built during the late 19th century.<ref>{{cite news | title = Mystery Surrounds Leavenworth's Underground City | publisher = [[KCTV5]] | date = 2008-08-07 | url = http://www.kctv5.com/news/17126244/detail.html | access-date = 2008-08-24 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110519161102/http://www.kctv5.com/news/17126244/detail.html | archive-date = 2011-05-19 }}</ref>