photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Deborah Dandridge, a pioneering archivist whose work has helped preserve African American history in the Great Plains region, speaks at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

An archivist specializing in African American historical documents told a Lawrence crowd on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that civic engagement and mutual support are proven ways of battling oppression.

Deborah Dandridge, a retired archivist at the University of Kansas, said civic engagement is a long-standing tradition among African Americans, and she said it took many individual efforts of self-help to survive under racial segregation.

“For many who were enslaved at that particular time, it enabled them to make progress despite the barriers . . . They forged communal bonds,” Dandridge said. “They produced a myriad of informal networks to support their families, their religions, their healthcare needs and aspirations of freedom as well.”

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

People eat breakfast at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

Dandridge was the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast, hosted by the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club at Maceli’s Banquet and Catering Hall in downtown Lawrence on Monday. The event honors Baptist minister and social activist Martin Luther King Jr., who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the 1950s until his assassination in 1968.

Dandridge retired in summer 2025 after working as a field archivist and curator of the African American Experience Collections at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. While at KU, Dandridge is credited with helping establish one of the nation’s few African American archives housed at a non-historically Black college or university.

She is also known for her deep involvement with Brown v. Board of Education history, earning a top achievement award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History for her dedication to preserving key historical documents and archives.

Those archives, she told Monday’s crowd, show that African American communities have centuries-long traditions of banding together to improve their lives. Dandridge said that by the the late-1700s, African American communities sought to improve and enrich their lives by gathering their talents and resources to build churches, organize benevolent societies, literary societies and establish local and statewide social welfare and educational institutions as well as build community through Black newspapers.

“We’re finding that civic engagement is a central part of the African American experience, and one in which can give us some kind of roadway to what we can do today,” Dandridge said.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Vocalist Vanessa Thomas sings at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

People eat breakfast at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Sen. Marci Francisco attends the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club President Annas Boyer speaks at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

Dandridge also said several African-American movements in Kansas are among some of the most significant in the country. The northcentral Kansas community of Nicodemus — home to a national historic site — is the oldest remaining Black settlement west of the Mississippi River. Dandridge also highlighted the history of Douglass Hospital in Kansas City, Kan, which was one of the first African American-established hospitals west of the Mississippi River.

She said Kansas in its founding days was fertile ground for such projects and movements.

“As these migrations increased, African Americans found it necessary to defend their civil rights,” Dandridge said. “So we had chapters of the Afro American League, a forerunner in the (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), as well as others.”

KU has played an important role in preserving the history of those projects and movements. Dandridge said that even though she has retired from KU, the work to preserve such history is still occurring at KU.

“I have retired … but I want you to know again that KU is still continuing with this collective program,” Dandridge said, adding that Phil Cunningham, the Kansas Collection Curator at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, is currently leading the efforts.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Christy Blanchard, a Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club member, awards the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club MLK Scholarship to Free State High School senior Ewa Adedipe on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026.

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During the event, the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club also awarded its annual $1,500 MLK Scholarship to Free State High School senior Ewa Adedipe.

Each year the Rotary Club awards the scholarship to a high school senior of color planning to attend a four-year university or two-year college within the next academic year. Scholarship winners must demonstrate a commitment to “service above self.”

Adedipe told Monday’s crowd that she’s learned the service above self concept while working at HeadQuarters Kansas, a nonprofit that provides suicide prevention services.

“When I first joined, my main goal wasn’t necessarily service but to be seen,” Adedipe said, adding that it was a good opportunity to add to college applications. “But over time … I realized I felt best not by taking action, or not by being the smartest or trying to show up, but specifically by trying to understand what that person needs at that moment and putting my needs below.”

Adedipe said she’s planning to attend a four-year college to study biomedical engineering to specifically help African Americans.