The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes has been awarded a grant from the LMCFreedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area (FFNHA) to support the “Fort Scott Stories” project.
The project, titled “Fort Scott Stories,” will include a wall-mounted 55-inch digital screen with touch and interactive capabilities. The screen will be placed in the museum and contain information about Fort Scott and Kansas unsung heroes and their histories. The wall mount contains technology that will allow for AI portraits of unsung heroes like native son and Renaissance man Gordon Parks, one of Fort Scott’s early Jewish businessmen Alfred Weil, and Kansas suffragist Carrie Langston Hughes, to name only a few! An interactive map will also pinpoint the connections to all of the Fort Scott unsung heroes! Through this effort, the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes aims to promote tourism, improve our local economy, and engage our local, national, and international visitors in new and exciting ways!
“We are really excited to work with the Freedom’s Frontier once again in our mutual effort to raise awareness about Kansas and Fort Scott unsung heroes and their history!” said Norm Conard, Executive Director of the LMC of Unsung Heroes in Fort Scott.
Freedom’s Frontier is a congressionally designated national heritage area that spans eastern Kansas and western Missouri, working with partners to preserve and share the stories of the region’s role in shaping the nation’s history. FFNHA provides grant funding to support projects promoting heritage tourism, historic preservation, and public interpretation.
The project is expected to be completed by the end of this summer.
Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes: The LMC is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) that works with students and educators within a range of diverse academic disciplines, to develop projects focused on unsung heroes. Our mission is to share those projects and the stories of these unsung heroes with our community through our museum at the Center!
Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area (FFNHA): FFNHA builds awareness of struggles for freedom in western Missouri and eastern Kansas. Established by Congress in 2006, FFNHA covers a unique physical and cultural landscape across 41 counties and 31,000 square miles. It promotes three diverse, interwoven, and nationally significant stories: frontier settlement, the Kansas-Missouri Border War and Civil War, and enduring civil rights disputes. FFNHA inspires respect for multiple perspectives and empowers area residents to preserve and share these stories, achieving its goals through interpretation, preservation, conservation, and education for all residents and visitors. It is one of the 62 federally recognized national heritage areas across the United States.