Contents: Background | Related Projects |
About the Collection
This is a sample of WPA records at the Kansas Historical Society that explore Mexican religious life in the state. Move through the images to read short histories about churches and their Mexican congregants.
This is only a brief snaphsot of vibrant Mexican religious life in Kansas. There are more WPA records detailing early masses and sermons, traveling priests, temporary spaces, and churches. Elsewhere, one can learn about the discrimination some Mexican church-goers faced, but that is not the current focus of this site. For now, the site illuminates a long history of Mexican ecclesiastical life in a region incorrectly categorized as having only a recent history of Latinx placemaking.
Background
The collection materials shared here stem from research completed by Bryan Winston. Mexican religious life in the Midwest is just one aspect of his research from a larger book project title Mexican Corridors: Migration and Placemaking in the Lower Midwest.
Related Projects
Winston has also created a visualization project titled “Mapping the Mexican Midwest” which maps early Mexican placemaking in the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
The site started from the CollectionBuilder-GH template which utilizes the static website generator Jekyll and GitHub Pages to build and host digital collections and exhibits.