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Kansas City has long been associated with barbeque, fountains and jazz music — but accordions? Not so much. Still, Kansas City has a rich accordion history thanks to Joan Cochran Sommers, an icon who is still conducting, teaching and playing the accordion.
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The river city of St. Joe, one of the largest cities in northwest Missouri, celebrates its 19th century roots, a vibrant arts scene, industry, and connection with nature.
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Harris-Kearney Museum to reopen after renovations to tell the 'full story' of Kansas City's foundingAfter 18 months of renovations, the historic Westport home will serve again as a center for stories from the old western frontier. 'We need to tell the story of enslavement and the Native American tribes that were affected by the settlement,' one historian says.
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Formed in the 1870s, Nicodemus was settled by formerly enslaved residents fleeing the central bluegrass region of Kentucky. Only a handful of structures survive from the town, which has been designed a National Historic Site.
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More than 30 years ago, a group of southwest Kansas counties tried to secede and form their own state called West Kansas. It’s largely forgotten now, but the political divisions that caused it remain.
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The Kansas City business leader and rancher left a lasting legacy in the Flint Hills and helped redevelop Kansas City’s West Bottoms. He died on Thursday.
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Sauer Castle's iconic tower was on the brink of collapse when Mike Heitmann bought it last year. Now, the building is stabilized and waterproof, and restorations are expected to be complete in about two years.
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Kansas City’s central location and easy access to rail travel, along with Missouri’s simplified adoption laws favoring secrecy, attracted prospective parents from around the U.S. Over the first part of the 20th century, more than a dozen homes for unwed mothers flourished, the largest and most well-known of which was The Willows.
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The landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools 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. The case centered around a two-room schoolhouse and included a lengthy boycott, big-shot NAACP lawyers, FBI surveillance — and six very brave children.
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In the 1970s and '80s, students at the universities of Kansas and Missouri protested on-campus to demand their institutions divest from a racist government in South Africa. Now, they’re asking schools to withdraw funds that support Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.
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Before Oreos, there was the Hydrox, the original sandwich cookie. And it was created by Kansas City’s own Jacob Loose. After disappearing for years, Hydrox are back on the shelf — but only if you know where to look.
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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.