A People's History of Kansas City
The podcast about the everyday heroes, renegades and visionaries who shaped Kansas City and the region. If these stories aren't told, they're in danger of fading into the past. Made by Suzanne Hogan and Mackenzie Martin.
Episodes
Signed 35 years ago this month, the Americans with Disabilities Act was the world’s first comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities — guaranteeing equal opportunity in public accommodations, employment, and more. But as Mackenzie Martin reports, it likely wouldn't have passed without relentless grassroots activism, or the advocacy of Kansas Republican Bob Dole.
Kansas City is preparing to welcome soccer fans from all around the world for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It’s the smallest host city in North America, and has a lot of work left to get ready. But how did we get to this historic moment? Kansas City may not have embraced the sport at all if it hadn’t been for the efforts of immigrants who fought for the beautiful game, back before there were even soccer fields to play on. S...
As the gay rights movement began picking up steam in the 1970s, Barbara Grier co-founded the largest lesbian publishing company in the world -- right from her Kansas City home. Grier was bold, controversial, and unstoppable in her mission to make books reflect the people and love stories in her life.
This episode of A People’s History of Kansas City was reported, produced, and mixed by Olivia Hewitt. Editing by Mackenzie Mart...
Bruce R. Watkins Drive is an iconic, 10-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 71 that displaced thousands of people in Kansas City. It divided communities, sparked a movement and led to a rare compromise that residents still live with today. KCUR’s Celisa Calaca reports a new federal grant is trying to mend some of the wounds.
Kansas City is asking voters to buy into its public school system for the first time in nearly 60 years. Even after Kansas City Public Schools regained accreditation and turned around student performance, its crumbling buildings are a persistent reminder of the city’s disinvestment and distrust — a relationship strained by decades of racism, a history-making desegregation case, and plenty of internal turmoil. KCUR&rsquo...
As Kansas City celebrates the Chiefs’ third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, the team name, logo, and some controversial fan customs are once again being beamed worldwide. Suzanne Hogan explores how it all got started, and how the team avoided becoming the Kansas City Texans.
This episode of A People's History of Kansas City was reported and mixed by Suzanne Hogan, pr...
Popcorn and movie theaters are inseparable today. But a century ago, cinemas actually banned the beloved treat for being cheap and messy. As Mackenzie Martin reports, a Kansas City widow named Julia Braden became one of the first popcorn vendors to talk her way inside the lobby, and built a concession empire in the middle of the Great Depression.
This episode of A People's Hi...
Nora Holt was the first Black person in the United States to earn a master’s degree in music. A prolific composer of more than 200 musical pieces and a club-hopping socialite, she once wrote a 42-page work for a 100-piece orchestra. But you’ve probably never heard any of it. Scholars have dreamt of finding her stolen manuscripts for nearly a century, according to Classical KC’s Sam Wisman.
Kansas City composer Dana Suesse was behind some of the most popular American music of the 1930s. Nicknamed “the girl Gershwin,” Suesse’s songs like “You Oughta Be In Pictures” and “My Silent Love” were performed by stars like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. As Classical KC’s Lilah Manning reports, Suesse blazed a path on Tin Pan Alley in a music scene otherwise dominated by men.
In 1976, Kansas City, Missouri, was the unlikely host of a drama-filled Republican presidential convention that ended up defining the conservative agenda for decades to come. Incumbent President Gerald Ford found himself in a heated battle with then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan to win over delegates and obtain the party’s nomination. WFAE’s Ben Bradford tells the story of how this “shoot-out” shaped the modern GOP. (This episode c...
The Veiled Prophet of St. Louis is an organization shrouded in mystery, an elite white secret society behind lavish parties, business developments and racist practices. As St. Louis Public Radio’s Chad Davis reports, the story of those who worked to unveil the Prophet directly laid the path to the Ferguson Uprising. (This episode comes to us from the podcast We Live Here.)
Support this podcast by becoming a KCUR member!: https://kcu...
Armed with a tape recorder, Kansas City librarian Irene Ruiz cataloged the evolving history of the Westside and made the library a more welcoming place for the Mexican immigrants and Latinos who lived there. Today, the Westside branch of the Kansas City Public Library — featuring the robust Spanish language collection that Ruiz began — is named in her honor. Mackenzie Martin traces how Ruiz brought her act...
The 19th-century American dance craze "the cakewalk" began as a form of resistance by enslaved Black people — a showy promenade concealing a mockery of slave owners. One of the most charismatic and famous cakewalking champions was Kansas City’s own Doc Brown. KCUR’s Julie Denesha reports on a modern movement to recognize Brown’s stamp on history.
Support this podcast by becoming a KCUR member!: https://kcurwebdonate.umkc.edu/alleg/W...
50 years ago thousands of people took over the small town of Sedalia, Missouri, for a party full of nudity, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll music that is often remembered as Missouri’s Woodstock. People still talk about the lore from that hot wild weekend. Local filmmaker Jefferson Lujin walks Suzanne Hogan through how it all went down. Depending on what side of the festival fence you were on it was three days of heaven – or three days of...
Most of Kansas was once covered by an ocean of grass and wildflowers. But that diverse prairie biome is collapsing, partly because of our obsession with trees. Humans have unleashed an aggressive “Green Glacier” that’s swallowing the Great Plains, and for these ranchers, saving the environment means being a tree killer — not a tree hugger. (This episode comes to us from the new KCUR Studios podcast Up From...
70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in its landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education. But the case may have played out differently if it hadn’t been for a tenacious group of women in Johnson County, Kansas, who led their own integration lawsuit five years earlier. As Mackenzie Martin reports, the case centered around a two-room schoolhouse and included a leng...
Once seen as a musical relic, audio cassettes have survived the eras of CDs and streaming to win over music lovers of a new generation. That’s in large part thanks to the National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri, the largest cassette manufacturer in the world.
Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world today. But few people remember the product that Nabisco blatantly ripped off: Hydrox. A creation of Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, Hydrox was billed as the “aristocrat of cookies,” with a novel combo of chocolate and cream filling. So why, more than a century later, is Hydrox still mistaken as a cheap knockoff?
Support this podcast by becoming a KCUR member!: https://kcurwebdo...
Before she even had the right to vote, Lyda Conley went to law school, conducted an armed occupation, and took a lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to protect the Wyandot Cemetery from being sold and excavated.
A historian says Kansas City "blew it" in the 1918 flu pandemic. How a corrupt political system and the end of World War I led to a bungled response and an overwhelming loss of life.
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