Missouri Valley Sundays

Powerful imagery of protests and violence helped bring attention to America's civil rights movement. Black photographers of the era broadened the nation’s view, also capturing a wide range of social activities in the African American community. Local photographers such as William Fambrough and Matthew Wa...

Authors Carol Grove and Cydney Millstein sit down with former Kansas City council member Jan Marcason to discuss their new book Hare & Hare, Landscape Architects and City Planners, spotlighting the pioneering Kansas City firm and its role...

Retired Kansas City attorney Michael Cronan discusses his book on the colorful life and career of James A. Reed, a Pendergast-backed politician who rose to mayor of Kansas City in 1900, went on to two terms in the U.S. Senate, and twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination.  

Historian Eric Anderson discusses the tumultuous, yet formative, beginnings of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. It evolved from a government-run boarding school intent on destroying the tribal identity of its students into a leading institution of higher education that celebrated...

In a discussion of his new book Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women’s Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940, author David Hanzlick traces the evolution of women’s activism in the city from the post-Civil War era through the demise of the Pendergast political machine....

Public historians Diane Eickhoff and Aaron Barnhart recall how hundreds of women defied cultural norms of the time to participate in the Civil War, cutting their hair, binding their breasts, donning men’s clothing, and reporting to army recruiters for duty. Others served as scouts or s...

The Library examines the history of the Kansas City chapter of the polarizing Black Panther Party and its founder, Pete O’Neal, starting with a screening of the 25-minute documentary Legacy: Spirit of the Black Panthers. Filmmakers Jermaine Thomas, Lyle Gibson, and Jacquey Valentine f...

When restaurateur Fred Harvey established his popular Harvey House restaurants along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in the late 1800s, thousands of young women were recruited to staff them. Many “Harvey Girls” came from rural and immigrant families and sought opportunity and adventure. Decades later, the...

Though St. Louis has faced many trials and tribulations since its founding in 1764, no point in its history is remembered more for tragedy than 1849. The city was little more than a frontier town at the time, and the strain of a rapidly growing population and poor infrastructure set the stage for two deadly outbreak...

In a discussion of his new book Prohibition in Kansas City, Missouri: Highballs, Spooners & Crooked Dice, local historian and blogger John Simonson recalls our city’s wide-open era of illegal booze and bootleggers and speakeasies, of corrupt police and politicians and moralizing reformers....