Sean Rost’s lifetime love of history has its roots in family vacations as a boy, which frequently included stops at historic sites and especially Civil War battlefields. From there, the Jefferson City, Missouri native and 2009 graduate of The Woods always found history and social studies to be his favorite subjects.
“It’s been said that the events of the past impact the present, and shape the future,” he said.
Little did he know that history itself would impact a major undertaking he was about to embark upon, one that meant writing his first book, while doing some research as a graduate student at the University of Missouri (Columbia) in 2013.
“I was working on a research paper about the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and focusing on my own home county of Cole County, Missouri,” Rost recalled. “In going through the long list of signers of a petition to put an anti-Klan candidate on the ballot for county sheriff, I came across the names of several of my ancestors. From that moment on, I had to keep digging to figure out why they signed this petition and where they fit in what I later discovered was an expansive, yet tenuous, anti-Klan coalition in Missouri.”
The experience led to Rost writing his first book, “Catching Hell from All Quarters: Anti-Klan Activists in Interwar Missouri,” which was published by the University of Missouri Press last month. The book inverts the traditional history of what has been termed the “second Ku Klux Klan” by examining the efforts of anti-Klan activists, in particular in Missouri, who challenged the growth, recruitment, and political ambitions of the KKK during the 1920s and 1930s through editorial crusades, educational campaigns, public pressure on elected officials, political investigations, and in some cases counter-vigilantism.
So the young man who counts several titles to his name – Assistant Director of Research at the State Historical Society of Missouri, adjunct college instructor, student of history – now has a new one: published author.
“I have always been a bookworm and dreamed of one day publishing something,” he said. “However, I struggled with writer’s block and other anxiety about my writing. It took a long time to put words on the page, but eventually I learned how to write and understand that not everything had to be perfect on the first draft.”
Yes, sometimes it takes more than one try to find the right fit. Like choosing the right college or the correct major, for example.
________________
After graduating from Helias High School in Jefferson City, Rost enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau with the intent of studying engineering. Over time, he contemplated other majors, including music and education, before landing on his first love of history. In addition to changing his major, he also felt a desire to move closer to home, so began looking to transfer.
“It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was the best recruiter for William Woods as she introduced me to students and faculty, took me to LEAD events, and gave me several tours of campus when I visited,” Rost recalled. “So I enrolled at William Woods in 2007.”
His two years on campus at The Woods inspired him, whether it was LEAD events (“I thought it was such an innovative concept to have students earn scholarships by attending events on campus such as lectures, sporting events, and performances”) or Chicken Finger Fridays at Tucker Dining Hall. All of it helping to prepare him for the “real world.”
“My final year at William Woods occurred at the start of the Great Recession, so interpreting and understanding what was happening and being prepared for such an environment came up a lot in my classes,” he said. “My internships and student teaching also took me from campus into actual classrooms to learn first-hand knowledge about education and curriculum.”
_________________
Graduating from The Woods in 2009 with a degree in History Education, Rost worked a wide variety of jobs while also taking graduate courses at the University of Missouri. While working on his PhD, he served as an adjunct History instructor at several Missouri colleges and universities, including WWU.
Then in 2018, he began what would seem to be a dream job for him, joining the State Historical Society of Missouri as an oral historian. Since 2022, he has served as Assistant Director of Research, which comes with a wide range of responsibilities, including managing the society’s oral history program which comprises 8,000 oral histories; helping coordinate the Missouri Conference on History and Missouri Speakers Bureau; hosting and producing the Our Missouri podcast, and managing the Historic Missourians website.
“But what I love most is getting to travel around the state and teach people about Missouri history,” Rost said. “Everything from the well-known to the more obscure, and I learn about Missouri history as well through conversations with my fellow Missourians.”
Going forward, his fellow Missourians, and other interested lovers of history, will be learning from him, thanks to his determination and many years of hard work to produce Catching Hell from All Quarters: Anti-Klan Activists in Interwar Missouri.
“As is often said, if you pick a topic to write about, you better be ready to be tied to that topic for several years,” Rost said. “This book was a little different because it came out of my dissertation research, thus I had several years of research and writing behind me before I revised it to book form. However, it was still a two-year process from the day I met with my editor to discuss the book idea until the day it was published. Along the way, I submitted drafts, got feedback from editors and other historians, provided text revisions, secured the rights to images and other materials, proofread the text more times than I can count, indexed the book, and finally approved it for publishing.”
And now, historians, students and other interested individuals can benefit from Rost’s work as an author. Which dovetails nicely with his advice to all of those who were once where he was, navigating the twists and turns of academia.
“Don’t forget to enjoy the experience, because it passes in the blink of an eye,” he said. “Take advantage of the opportunity to learn. It is not very often in life that you will find yourself in a location where you are not only receiving a high-quality education, but you are also surrounded by music, the arts, performances, lectures, sporting events and of course, the library!”
And oh yeah, one more thing.
“Your education doesn’t cease the minute you walk across the stage with your degree. Become a lifelong learner.”
Spoken like a true author and historian!
