History
A Look Back at the Deadly ‘68 Riots
Fifty years ago this April, Kansas City experienced deadly riots that put the national spotlight on our city. They left six people dead, hundreds arrested and multiple blocks of the city in flames. Frustrated with the slow pace of civil rights reforms and outraged at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., protesters in Kansas…
An Exchange of a Lifetime
By Debbie Coleman-Topi Amid the riots unleashed following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a spark of hope quietly ignited in the center of the country. That flicker was right here, in Kansas City, where Catholic leaders launched an experiment that confronted race head-on by bringing black and white students literally face to…
Searching For Her Dad’s Technical High School
By Jack Harvel Like so many men of his generation, Jack Harrigan was a small-town kid born early in the 20th century, weathered the Great Depression, fought in World War II, then returned home to raise a family while working a blue-collar job until passing away in 1990 at the age of 75. His daughter…
Resurrecting Quindaro
As Americans north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line debated slavery, a boomtown that sprouted from the scrub along the Missouri River emerged as one of the most unlikely bellwethers of the national mood in the run-up to the Civil War. That community was Quindaro, Kansas, and virtually overnight it became something of a prototype…
The Rise and Fall of a Boomtown
Get a deeper history of the port town of Quindaro and hear from a local woman who used our curiousKC initiative to ask why excavations had not been finished for the important site.
A Sweet Memory Prompts Strawberry Hill Question
By Rachel Thomas When she was around 10 years old, Christine Rogge attended an ethnic festival in the area of Kansas City, Kansas, known as Strawberry Hill. That was decades ago, but the fond memory remains, and the south Kansas City woman turned to curiousKC so that she could pass along the rich history of that…
Whatever Happened to Cake Box…And Those Other Restaurants?
We’ve been telling the stories of restaurants from the past this year, diving into a trio of burger shacks: Smaks, Wimpey’s, and the Nu-Way Drive-In. It’s all part of our curiousKC series, wherein local readers, viewers and listeners get the chance to ask those burning questions about where we live. [FLEX-CONTENT] Today’s trio of questions…
Whatever Happened To…Those Other Burger Places?
It was that burger place your mom took you to after you bought shoes or the stop on the way home for an after school treat. Everybody has traditions around food — a restaurant that marks a moment in time or period in your life. Flatland recently told the story of Smaks, a local burger chain…
Whatever Happened to Smaks?
The elephant on Johnson Drive stopped traffic. “My dad [Bill Fielder] had met a zookeeper and he asked him to bring over an elephant for the opening of Smaks,” Wes Fielder said. “You’d watch the cars out front and people would slam on their brakes to try to figure out what was going on.” The…
‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ Backstory
Ruth Henning couldn’t find the one book she wanted to read. So, like a lot of writers before her, she wrote the book herself. That book, “The First Beverly Hillbilly: The Untold Story of the Creator of Rural TV Comedy,” is a newly published memoir of Henning’s husband, television producer Paul Henning, who grew up…