Episode 11: "Wide-Open Town" – Diane Mutti Burke & Jason Roe (Going to Kansas City, Part 4)

Season Description

Premiering in September 2018, the Our Missouri Podcast's inaugural season opens with Bob Priddy discussing his book, “The Art of the Missouri Capitol.” From that auspicious start, listeners can explore all corners of the state from Kansas City and the Missouri River Valley to the Governor's Mansion, the Ozarks, and the Land of Big Red Apples. Season 1 also features conversations on key topics, including Genealogy, National History Day, and Missouri's Bicentennial.

Season 1 (2018-2019)

Episode Description

With this year's Missouri Conference on History coming up in March, many scholars will soon be going to Kansas City. To help prepare for the conference, the Our Missouri Podcast invites listeners to explore the City of Fountains from the confluence of two mighty rivers near the downtown skyline to the Plaza, the Paseo, and the intersection of 18th and Vine. This five-part series entitled "Going to Kansas City" focuses on several projects and institutions that document and define Kansas City's history and identity. This episode features Diane Mutti Burke and Jason Roe talking about the recently edited collection, Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era. This new book is a collaborative era by several scholars to research and document Kansas City's diverse population and institutions during the first half of the 20th Century.

Episode Image: Petticoat Lane, Kansas City, Missouri, ca. 1935 [Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Photographs (P0280), SHSMO]

About the Guest

Diane Mutti Burke

Diane Mutti Burke is a professor of history and director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Emory University. Her first book, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865, won the Missouri Conference on History Book Award in 2010. In addition to her award-winning book, she has also co-edited three anthologies on the Missouri/Kansas border region, including Kansas City, America’s Crossroads, co-edited with John Herron; Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border, co-edited with Jonathan Earle; and Wide Open Town: Kansas City during the Pendergast Era, co-edited with John Herron and Jason Roe.

Jason Roe

Jason Roe is the digital history specialist for the Kansas City Public Library. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Kansas. He is also the recipient of several awards for his digital history projects through the Kansas City Public Library, including "The Pendergast Years" and "Civil War on the Western Border" which won the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History from the American Historical Association and George Mason University.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcript