A People's History of Kansas City

KCUR Studios
  • 4.8 (190)
  • HISTORY
  • UPDATED MONTHLY
A People's History of Kansas City Podcast

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.

  1. 6 DAYS AGO

    A librarian’s history of the Westside

    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 activism and sense of community across all the chapters of her life.

    30 min
  2. Kansas City’s champion cakewalker

    AUG 14

    Kansas City’s champion cakewalker

    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.

    28 min
  3. The Ozark Music Festival of 1974

    JUL 17

    The Ozark Music Festival of 1974

    Fifty 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 hell.

    32 min
  4. Saving the Kansas prairie

    JUN 5

    Saving the Kansas prairie

    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 Dust, reported by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos.)

    41 min
  5. The Walker Walkouts

    MAY 15

    The Walker Walkouts

    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 lengthy boycott, big-shot NAACP lawyers, FBI surveillance — and six very brave children.

    39 min
  6. Where cassette tapes never died

    APR 10

    Where cassette tapes never died

    Cassette tapes could have remained a relic of the 1970s and 80s. But against all odds, they’ve 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. Suzanne Hogan shares the story of how this proudly analog format found a new life.

    29 min
  7. Hydrox, the original Oreo

    MAR 6

    Hydrox, the original Oreo

    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? Producer Mackenzie Martin documents the rise and fall of America’s first chocolate sandwich cookie.

    38 min

  8. FEB 21

    PHKC live! A podcast party for America's original sandwich cookie

    Did you know that a certain cream-filled black and white sandwich cookie got its start right here in Kansas City? And no, we're not talking about the Oreo.A People's History of Kansas City is hosting a special live event on March 1, 2024, where host Suzanne Hogan and producer Mackenzie Martin will take you back to the birth of the very first: Hydrox. Hear our next episode before everyone else. Go to KCUR.org/cookies for tickets.

    2 min
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4.8
out of 5
190 Ratings

About

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.

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