Religion and Prejudice - A Story
By Alan Albers, local farmer, retired history teacher and chair of the Kingman County Democrats.
I’ve mentioned in my past writings about Frank Weinschenk and Willowdale and how he had been able to buy up large portions of South West Kingman County in the late 1800’s.
First he bought up the Willowdale area and 25 years later the area that was to become St. Leo. Being German Catholic himself he decided that he would only sell the land to German Catholics. He did veer from this policy in selling to a couple of Irish Catholics but never a Protestant.
I’ve often read about the U.S. being a melting pot. I have also often questioned this idea as being real and I guess the early arrivals to this country didn’t want to blend in with those different from themselves.
Weinschenk’s logic was that people needed a commonality to get along. The prevalence of German people in the rural Kansas areas hasn't been widely known. Governor Kelly just delivered the State of the State Address a couple of weeks ago. In the first State of the State presented in the late 1800’s, of the 8,000 copies printed, 3,000 were printed in German.
When our youngest son was attending Newman University in Wichita I attended a presentation about German Communities in Kansas. The speaker stated that there were 17 German Communities in Kansas. Listed as one of the communities was Willowdale/St. Leo group. The German Baptists of Sawyer (south of Pratt) were also mentioned. The German Lutheran community of Nashville wasn’t mentioned, so there were more than 17 .
In my experience Kansas and the rest of the U.S. being unified was always a myth. Our German ancestors were prejudiced against anyone not German and I was equally opinionated that everyone different than me was bad. We had little or no contact with other minorities and were constantly told that these people were to be avoided.
The World Wars began the change locally. Between WW1 and WW2 German speaking was greatly reduced. My dad or mom never spoke German because of negativity about Germans. In Nashville the KKK raided the Lutheran Church on a Sunday and threatened to hang the Pastor because they still used the German Bible and spoke German in their services. My mother’s family name ends in “man” - between the Wars the family dropped the extra n from “mann” to make it look less German. Other families in the area also changed the spelling on their surnames.
So we have always had our divisions. But knowing our past history, I feel we learned and hopefully become better people. The idea that we shouldn’t teach the honest history of our nation, because our own sons and daughters might feel ashamed of the past, runs counter to what has actually made us great. The only way to change past mistakes is to know those errors and move forward to become a better you — and better us. My hope is that we pass through this moment with a new commitment to learn and change.
This work copyrighted 2025 by Alan Albers and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Cover photo of chess bishop, by Che shared CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. File Chess_bishop_0970.jpg