(Photo by: Baptiste Raffin)

This year marks the 250th Anniversary of America, and January 29th was Kansas Day. Clearly, JCCC knows how to celebrate, and that is with an exhibit hosted by Humanities Kansas, an organization the college decided to partner with for this exciting anniversary celebration. This has provided our campus with the opportunity to learn about the Declaration of Independence through an exhibit in the CoLab made by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Humanities Kansas is a statewide nonprofit organization that works to connect Kansans with resources like literature, history, philosophy and other humanities topics.

“We make them accessible to communities across the state, and we like to say we lead a movement of ideas,” Tracy Quillin, Associate Director of Humanities Kansas, said.

This exhibit was purchased from the Gilder Lehrman Institute by Humanities Kansas. Kansas locations were then able to decide if they wanted to be part of the cost-free tour.

“We put a call out to organizations to apply to host this exhibit, and we got 60 applications. It was really clear to us that we had something bigger happening. We had a lot of inquiries from colleges and universities that wanted to host the exhibit for longer,” Quillin said. “What if we made this sort of a big exhibit opportunity that covered as many communities as we can? So now we have four copies traveling across the state through December 31st.”

Organizations were also given the option to purchase their own exhibit, and JCCC decided to purchase its own copy of the exhibit for JCCC students to enjoy from Jan. 29 to March 15, 2026. There are a total of six of these “anchor sites.” But why should this exhibit and the Declaration of Independence matter to students?

“The Women’s Rights Movement, Gay Rights, the Civil Rights Movement, all kinds of things are addressed in there because they all directly tie to the Declaration of Independence in ways that not everybody remembers. So it’s a good way to remind us of that in a really accessible, fun way,” said Tai Edwards, the Director of the Kansas Studies Institute.

The exhibit includes about eight panels, each with sections that explain certain aspects of the Declaration of Independence.

“We want people to stop and read this document and think about what it meant for our Founding Fathers to write and add their names to this really extraordinary document,” Quillan said.

The exhibit was opened to the public on Jan. 29, Kansas Day, so Humanities Kansas decided to add a special panel for the Kansas tour titled “Kansas 1776”. It provides a look into what was happening on this land 250 years ago, before the state was founded.

To view and learn about this piece of history, students can access the exhibit in the CoLab, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.