Gretchen Cassel Eick lives in Wichita, Kansas. After working as a foreign/military policy lobbyist on Capitol Hill for fourteen years, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and for twenty years was professor of history at Friends University. She taught in Latvia as a Fulbright Scholar and traveled South Africa on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in 2004 to study ten years of democracy there. She had worked in the anti-apartheid movement for thirty years. Her book, Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72, won three regional awards. Chapter 1 documents the sit-in Dr. Walters organized with his cousin Carol Parks (Hahn) in 1958. Currently she writes fiction, teaches African and African American history, and volunteers with The Kansas African American Museum.