By Dewey Terrill
JC Post
Quilts centering around Black History Month were displayed by local quilt maker Montika Allen-Atkinson Saturday during STEAM activities at the Geary County Historical Museum. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math.
Quilts dealt with subjects ranging from the Underground Railroad and a former prominent Kansas resident Gordon Parks to Shirley Chisholm. "I talked about where she and Bob Dole passed a bill pushing food stamps through to feed the hungry."
Allen-Atkinson used African wax fabrics to make the quilts. "They're very bright and they're very prominent colors that are depicting the attire of clothing that Africans wear.
Allen-Atkinson makes the quilts at her home where she had a studio built on.
STEAM Saturday also celebrated African American Inventors and visitors got the chance to engineer some of their own inventions. One of those inventions was the ice cream scoop with the pusher known as a trigger, that was developed by Alfred Cralle.
Historical Society Board of Directors President Florence Whitebread helped at the table where that invention by Cralle, and information about ice cream innovator Augustus Jackson were were displayed.
Heather Hagedorn, Historical Society Executive Director, stated that STEAM Saturday events will be held the third Saturday of every month. "It's a new series. It's all hands on, using your engineering skills, using well, STEAM, science, technology, engineering, art and math to try and create a link between history and the things that we do today."