History Museum on the Square

Join us at the History Museum on the Square during this amazing event!

🎉🇺🇸 Happy 250th Independence Day! See you in August!

Come join our team! History Museum on the Square is taking applications for the Education Manager position. Check the website for details:

Jobs and Careers - History Museum on the Square - Springfield, MO Looking for a museum career? Love history? We're always looking for passionate lovers of Springfield, MO history to work at our museum.

We celebrate World Photography Day by showcasing local photography legend Betty Love. Betty Love was born in Springfield and is a graduate of Drury College. She spent one year teaching in Texas before returning to the area to teach art at McGregor Elementary and Jarrett Junior High. While teaching at Jarrett, she was asked to temporarily take over for a cartoonist at Springfield Daily News and Leader-Press.

As the US became involved in WWII, the paper's photojournalist John Reading McGuire was drafted. The paper needed a photographer, so Love was handed McGuire’s camera and appointed to her new role. She taught herself how to use the camera and develop film, as well as how to translate her artistic language from one medium to another. During her photography career, she photographed aerial shots of Springfield, prisoners at Greene County Jail, and local events such as the Great Cobra Scare.

Love received awards for her photographs in both journalism and in the arts. She was a charter member of the National Press Photographers Association and was one of the first five people to be inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame. After a long career, she retired in 1975.

(Text co-written with History Museum on the Square Volunteer Oliver Hart)

is a day of celebration, commemorating the freedom of enslaved people in the United States. On June 19th, 1865 — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed — Union General Major-General Gordon Granger led his troops into Galveston Bay, Texas to inform over 250,000 enslaved people of their freedom. Texas, being the westernmost state in the confederacy, was still largely under confederate control at the time, so the news of the Emancipation Proclamation had not traveled quickly. Each year since then, Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of Black Americans.

Missouri emancipation happened sooner, on January 11th, 1865. Only three weeks before the United States Congress proposed the important 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Missouri passed this crucial proposal forever abolishing slavery in the state. In St. Louis, not long before the end of the Civil War, delegates at a state constitutional convention met and took a vote of 60 for and 4 against in January of 1865. Governor Thomas Fletcher and his Missouri State Legislature stood firmly behind the new decision and put the law into action at once. This original lithograph print was designed to honor Missouri's emancipation ordinance, and it is displayed in the History Museum on the Square's Civil War gallery.

To learn more, visit National Juneteenth Museum and Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.