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Kansas City native Edward J. Dwight Jr. is set to be on the next Blue Origin rocket into space. The rare opportunity comes more than six decades after he was passed over to become a NASA astronaut.
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Business owners have campaigned for nearly two years to sever Troost Avenue from its slaveholding past. But the effort has hit a bureaucratic roadblock, as Mayor Quinton Lucas tries to avoid another public controversy like the failed renaming of The Paseo.
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Each year, a group of young members of the Cherokee Tribes gets on bikes and retraces the Trail of Tears their ancestors traveled when relocated by the U.S. government almost 100 years ago. They hope to bring more understanding and acknowledgement of the tragic event.
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Jack Snelling hit the road with a mission: Visit every historic courthouse in Missouri.
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Kansas City’s first Pride parade in 1977 was spearheaded by Lea Hopkins, whose organizing sparked a wider gay rights movement that continues today. But it was only a few weeks after that successful event that Hopkins found herself on the defense again, when a prominent anti-gay activist came on a crusade through town.
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Gov. Laura Kelly shot down a proviso in the state budget bill allocating $250,000 for the Quindaro Ruins Archaeological Park in Kansas City, historically an important stop on the Underground Railroad. One of the site’s top supporters, Kansas City Democrat Rep. Marvin Robinson, broke party lines to help Republicans override Kelly's veto of a transgender athlete ban.
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An independent group at William Jewell revealed the college founders’ deep ties to slavery, including the fact that enslaved people helped build Jewell Hall and that the college's namesake Dr. William Jewell did not free all the people he enslaved, contrary to previous accounts.
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With a small-but-mighty restaurant culture, its own newspaper, and a vision for the future, the neighborhood of Martin City is a cultural hub in South Kansas City.
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A 1975 protest at a McDonald’s restaurant in Kansas City emerged from years of escalating tension — between Black community members and their city, and between McDonald’s and the neighborhoods it inhabited. But this particular location was also one of the first Black-owned fast-food franchises in the country, an accomplishment born from its own struggle for inclusion.
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Ed and Brad Budde both played offensive line for the Chiefs, and were both first round draft picks — a singular achievement in the NFL.
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Kansas City is known as the "City of Fountains," and it's earned the name — with more than any city other than Rome. From opulent displays to more simple spouts, these water features beautify our environment and connect us to the Kansas City of the past.
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Abraham Josephine Riesman’s best-selling book, “Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America,” recounts how the WWE went through an aggressive expansion in the 1980s, including in St. Louis.
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Pfc. Willy F. James Jr. was among seven African American troops unjustly denied the country’s highest military award for valor during World War II. Veterans and service members at James' memorial shared their thoughts on his legacy.
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Conservative legislators nationwide, including in Kansas, have introduced bills to restrict or criminalize certain drag performances. But drag queens haven’t stopped performing.
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Lawrin was owned by Herbert Woolf, the president of Woolf Brothers, one of the most important clothing stores in Kansas City history. Woolf also had an odd connection to political boss Tom Pendergast.
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A pair of exhibits at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence are inspired by the life and death of Emmett Till, which helped launch the civil rights movement. The work of area textile artists helps connect the 1955 killing to contemporary violence against Black people.
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The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum accepted on Thursday the remnants of the vandalized statue. The cleats will be added to an existing exhibit about the first Black American to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier.
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Around the Kansas City region, living history museums like Missouri Town and Shawnee Town reveal how people lived in earlier eras, with collections of historic buildings, demonstrations of period crafts, and stories of the people who lived there.
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Matt Stewart's "The Kansas City Royals: An Illustrated Timeline" was a chance to revisit forgotten stories about the team and get them in print for posterity.
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Up until a few weeks ago, Lynette Woodard from the University of Kansas had scored more points in college basketball than any woman ever. But she was never recognized by the NCAA as a scoring champion.
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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?
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Before Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen made their names as ball-slingers who could also sprint, Bobby Douglass and Steve Grogan were using their legs to find ways to win football games.
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This weekend's playoff matchup is reigniting memories of a 1971 divisional game that included two overtimes and more than 22 minutes of extra time.
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On Jan. 11, also known as Missouri Emancipation Day, the Missouri History Museum is bringing new attention to an antebellum insurrection plot that was secretly devised by free Black Americans in St. Louis — and how an insubordinate war hero ticked off Lincoln with his antics to free enslaved Missourians during the Civil War.