Missouri Valley Sundays

Murderers. Mob bosses. Anarchists. Bootleggers. Thieves. They’ve all found a home at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, regarded for many years as the ultimate high-security prison. Now their stories are told by the National Archives’ Jake Ersland in an exploration of the Archives’...

Trumpeter Miles Davis once said: "You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker." Saxophone virtuoso Charlie "Bird" Parker — a Kansas City native — began playing professionally in his early teens, became a heroin addict at 16, changed the course of music, and then...

By 1940, Kansas City authorities had finally deposed “Boss Tom” Pendergast. In the spring of that year, teams of laborers from the Works Progress Administration began a months-long effort to produce Jackson County’s first systematic property tax assessment. Part of their job was to photograph every taxable str...

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Kansas City native Tommy Campbell won 50 professional fights and became the world’s No. 2 lightweight. But thanks to a run-in with organized crime, he is now all but forgotten in the town that nurtured him. Phil S. Dixon, author of Tommy Campbell: A...

Though far from the fashion center of New York, Kansas City once boasted a large, vibrant garment manufacturing industry. During its heyday in the early-to-mid twentieth century more than 4,000 workers were engaged in the business, and one in seven American women owned a garment designed and made in Kansas City....

Built in 1942 in Johnson County, Kansas, the Sunflower Ordnance Works quickly became the world’s largest producer of rocket propellant, an essential part of America’s “Arsenal of Democracy” during World War II. Anne Jones, curator of collections at the Johnson County Museum, and Ma...

William Quantrill’s August 21, 1863 Confederate raid on Lawrence, Kansas, left nearly 200 men and boys dead and the city in flames. Film expert John Tibbetts explores how that dramatic story has found its way onto celluloid in movies as varied as Dark Command (1940), Quantrill’s Raiders...

Arguments may ensue on the merits of individual barbecue joints, but no one disputes the extent that the “culture” of B-B-Q has helped define everyday life in Kansas City. Local filmmakers Kevin Fossland and Martin Diggs are currently filming The Kansas City Barbe...

As the Kansas City Board of Trade prepares to move to Chicago, its CEO Michael Braude traces the history, development, and economic impact of the 157-year-old futures exchange specializing in hard red winter wheat. It was said that more money changed hands at the Board of Trade than anywhere else in th...

Biographer Robert Farnsworth discusses his new eBook about the life, death, and legacy of Leon Jordan, a one-time police officer and educator who founded Freedom, Inc., and became Missouri’s most powerful black politician before being gunned down in a 1970 assassination outside his Kan...