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22A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2004
HOMECOMING
Photo Illustration by Cameron Monke
The story behind crimson and blue
BY CATHERINE WILCOX correspondent@kansan.com KANSAN CORRESPONDENT
What colors come to mind when the University of Kansas is mentioned? Generally, crimson and blue.
But in the 1870's, sky blue and corn yellow were the official colors. One assumption is that these colors were decided by the first graduating class from the University of Kansas, according to www.kuhistory.com.
"Sky blue and corn yellow are such wimpy colors. They definitely needed to be changed," said Paola freshman Jay Warring.
and Papa Rusham in 1891 The athletic board in 1891 questioned these colors because of visible stains on uniforms. The board sought after darker colors, and given that the University was referred to as the "Harvard of the Midwest," colors were changed to crimson.
Then after much criticism, New York attorney John J. McCook suggested the University add either blue or black to the combination of crimson. In 1896, the University's athletic board choose crimson and blue, two colors together that had not been used by any other university. And more than 100 years later, crimson and blue are still the colors of the University.
In honor of the colors of the University, Crimson and Blue day will be tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.M. on the Stauffer Flint Hall lawn.
Anyone who sports the colors can claim free KU attire such as Jayhawk stickers and tattoos, beads and pom-poms. Also, a banner will be available to the KU community to sign, supporting the football team.
'Nightshirts'invade campus
The end of September 1957 found some long-standing customs contested, both in the nation and atop Mt. Oread.
President Dwight Eisenhower reluctantly federalized the Arkansas National Guard in order to overcome opposition in that state to the integration in Arkansas of Little Rock's public schools.
As the students on Mt. Oread took in all of these events (with most apparently supporting the action of Eisenhower and the decision of Armstrong), they found themselves contemplating the future of an increasingly questionable practice of their own. While segregation did exist in Lawrence at the time, that was not the tradition on the minds of University of Kansas undergrads. Rather, they pondered the future of what had been an annual event for more than half a century — the boisterous Nightshirt Parade.
The University Daily Kansan reported in September that the student body president was encouraging KU's All Student Council (ASC) to adopt some proposed changes that would end the annual affair.
end the annual sale.
He contended the Nightshirt Parades "had never been very popular" with KU students and expressed his hope that they would be replaced with "a football rally at Allen Field House ... followed by a social function."
And so in the midst of a debate over the future of the parade and on the night before a gridiron showdown between KU and Oregon State (in which the Beavers would prevail by a score of 12-0), 700 nightshirt-clad students gathered in the parking lot of Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall. The assembly "swarmed across campus" to the "Student Union to pick up L.C. Woodruff, dean of students, Donald G. Alderson, dean of men, and Miss Emily Taylor, dean of women." Woodruff and Alderson both sported red and white striped pajamas while "Miss Taylor wore a matching night cap."
Cancellor Franklin D. Murphy where KU's chief administrator, dressed in a bright red nightshirt of his own, joined the crowd as it paraded to the Mississippi Street baseball field. After a rally led by the football team's Coach Chuck Mather in the field adjacent to Memorial Stadium, 250 couples attended a dance in the Student Union Ballroom, where they were entertained by melodious tunes of The Collegiates until nearly midnight.
a matching night cap. The procession then wound its way to the residence of
Although no one knew for sure at the time, as the ASC would not vote to end the traditional parade until the following year, when the festivities had ended that night, the University had hosted its final Nightshirt Parade. Another University tradition had gone quietly into the night.
The precise origins of KU's Nightshirt Parades are somewhat muddled. Reports exist of male University students gathering in nightshirts for spontaneous celebrations of Jayhawker football victories as early as the 1890s.
1890s. However, the first well-documented case of KU students donning pajamas for an outdoor celebration came in April 1902 and was not held in honor of an athletic victory of any kind but rather as a festive gesture congratulating the appointment of Dr. Frank Strong as the University's sixth chancellor. The Board of Regents had chosen Strong, a Yale PhD then serving as president of the University of Oregon, after a lengthy nationwide search.
Contemporary reports indicate that most KU students were delighted with the selection, particularly as Strong had a reputation for being "very much interested in athletic sports" and for interpreting "the caprices of youth that often incite indiscretions and pranks ... in their proper sense."
student body decided to give him an appropriate sendoff. Shortly before 10 that night, 100 or so KU students "beddecked in night gowns" congregated in South Park and, followed by "mobs of others in civilian attire," made their way to the Eldridge Hotel where Strong was staying.
When news spread that the chancellor-elect, who had been in Lawrence for final interviews, was going to cut short his visit and catch the 10:35 p.m. train back to Oregon, members of the
was staying.
After coaxing a brief speech from him, the students offered to accompany the chancellor-elect
Mark D. Hersay
Department of History
KUhistory.com
to the Union Pacific train station Thus
with 30 or 40 nightshirt-clad students taking the place of horses in front of a rented carriage, the group escorted Strong across the Kansas River to the depot (the present-day Lawrence Visitor Center). There "more speechmaking followed" and the "air resounded with loyal yells."
resounded with joy. He
strong thanked the students
for the gesture, reminding them
that he expected to see "the
same kind of enthusiasm" when
he returned to Mt. Oread that
fall as chancellor.
The next well-documented occasion in which KU students paraded through Lawrence in their evening clothes came in the fall of 1905 and had its roots in the denouement of a violent KU tradition. On Thursday, Sept. 21 of that year, Chancellor Strong negotiated a truce between the freshmen and sophomore classes, bringing an end to the annual "fall numeral fight," a physical confrontation between male members of the sophomore and freshman classes that had become increasingly ferocious. Interclass rivalries at Kansas and other universities were often tainted with violence at the dawn of the 20th century.
Indeed the fighting served in many ways as a rite of male initiation. The best remembered example of these bouts at KU was the Maypole Scrap, but other clashes were commonplace and took little provocation to initiate. One year, such fisticuffs even erupted between
the freshmen and sophomore classes during chapel.
The first tenuous attempts to secure a peace between the two classes had come the day before. However, that evening "scouting parties of the two classes engaged in a hand to hand conflict on the rocky slopes of Adams Street." As the freshmen lost this fight, the next day they demanded an apology which the sophomores refused to extend and "but for the diplomacy of Chancellor Strong the effort for peace" would have proven abortive.
abortive.
Initially Strong, like his immediate predecessor Chancellor Francis H. Snow, had been inclined to favor the occasional interclass scrap for their potential to bolster manliness and class spirit. He changed his mind when two freshmen sustained serious injuries in the fighting of fall 1904, a result that also brought negative publicity to the University. Thus Strong persuaded the sophomores to apologize and convinced both classes to agree to bring an end to the scraps.
The following morning in his weekly Friday chapel remarks, Strong thanked the two classes for consenting to end the fighting. In possession of "the treaty of peace duly ratified and signed," the chancellor claimed to feel "much like President Roosevelt," who two weeks earlier had negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Strong didn't realize, however, that he had inadvertently played a role in initiating a new tradition on Mt. Oread that would in time be marked by a different sort of violence.
For that evening, which happened to be the day before the Jayhawker gridiron squad's first game of the season, the "sophomores and freshmen established a precedent ... when two hundred of them paraded the streets of Lawrence in night-shirts, instead of holding the regular class scrap."
- Reprinted with permission from KUhistory.com