Missouri Valley Sundays

Journalist and local historian Cindy Higgins presents an illustrated talk about the brewers and breweries of early Kansas, their role in fostering a sense of community within the state’s German enclaves, and their surprising legacy among today’s beer aficionados.

In July 1974, an estimated 100,000 members—and probably more—of the Woodstock generation descended on the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia for a weekend of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Amid the sweltering heat and the sounds of such popular bands as the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and REO Speedwagon,...

The federal government has been keeping tabs on foreign visitors to these shores for decades. In 1940 the Immigration and Naturalization Service began issuing each of them an Alien Registration number, and in 1944—in the midst of World War II—began to use this number to create individual case files calle...

By the time of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the land and people of western Missouri had suffered as much as any during the Civil War. The 1863 edict known as “Order No. 11”—forcing the evacuation of all non-rural residents of three western counties including Jackson—and the Federal army that...

Kansas mills, located literally in the breadbasket of America, produced an enormous quantity of flour in an era when women routinely baked their families’ bread at home. Mill owners used cotton flour sacks as advertising tools to proudly display their names, locations, and unique brands, as well as to catch the cons...

Bordered by rugged cliffs and the Missouri and Kansas rivers, the West Bottoms provided the spark for a rugged cowtown to become an urban metropolis. Steve Noll, executive director of the Jackson County Historical Society since 2004, draws from his personal collection and from Cowtown: C...

Richard L. Berkley once said, “I like meeting people.” Before, during, and after his record three-term tenure as Kansas City’s mayor — from 1979 to 1991 — he met hundreds of political leaders, entertainers, sports stars, and other celebrities. Most times, he asked to take their pictures. Be...

How did Kansas City miraculously transform itself from “the filthiest city in the United States” in the 19th century to the clean, well-planned embodiment of the vision of renowned landscape architect George Kessler? Eyesores and health threats — ugly gullies, open sewers, and decrepit shanties — d...

George Creel, the onetime head of President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, recalled in his memoir “how we advertised America.” But more accurately, his legacy was selling World War I to the country’s largely neutral populace. After proclaiming during his 1916 reelection campaign that “he kep...

Although Kansas joined the Union as a free state, African Americans entering this new land looking for homes and livelihoods encountered a rigid color line. The conflict between lofty ideals and racist realities became a central theme of the African American experience in Kansas. In Separate But Not E...