The history of the Kansas City Public Library is also the history of Kansas City. Missouri incorporated Westport Landing into the City of Kansas in 1853, then renamed it Kansas City in 1889 – and in between those years, in 1873, the Board of Education established the Library. 

The Library’s digital history specialist Jason Roe and historian Matt Reeves coauthored Kansas City's Public Library: Empowering the Community for 150 Years, published in October 2024. 

As he and Reeves went through the Missouri Valley Special Collections archives, Roe says, “Across eras, a consistent theme emerged: That the Library is an indispensable agent of community empowerment.” 

The book approaches that theme from a few angles. 

One tale included is how the Library grew from a single, $8 bookcase housing the American Encyclopedia into a system that includes 10 locations and a digital branch. But there’s also the story of how countless staff members and volunteers gave portions of their lives to build or improve upon the services offered to the community. And finally, is the broader narrative of how, as the Library grew and changed, so did Kansas City alongside it. 

After the Civil War, the young town remained unrefined and rough. The economy and population were growing rapidly, but a scathing – and anonymous – column in The Kansas City Star voiced what many thought at the time: “We have nothing to attract people here; nothing to keep them here when they have a chance to come, and our undesirable reputation in that regard has spread out over the entire country.” 

Today, largely thanks to the Library, it’s a different story entirely. The founding of the Library gave everyone, regardless of social class or education level, the same access to knowledge, engagement with the arts, access to great thinkers and writers, a seat at the table for community fellowship, and, eventually, critical digital access. 

Over the years, hundreds of thousands of patrons have walked the stacks and quietly read at our tables, each one adding to the fabric of the institution, and therefore the community, in small and large ways. 

The majority of those patrons’ names have not gone down in history, but those whose names are part of the city’s history act, in a way, as stand-ins for all the rest. 

Walt Disney, for instance, credits the Library in a 1937 letter to a librarian, with giving him his first information about animation. “I feel the Public Library has been a very definite help to me all through my career,” he wrote. 

Ewing Marion Kauffman, founder of Marion Laboratories and later owner of the Kansas City Royals, suffered frequent, prolonged periods of bedrest as a child due to a heart condition. He’d sometimes read as many as forty books per month and later credited his business success to his love for reading. The philanthropic organization that he founded in 1966, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, has since established a permanent fund for book acquisitions, provided funding for spaces in the Central Library and the Plaza Branch, and supported the Library’s Signature Events programming for many years. 

And when famed Kansas City human rights champion Alvin Sykes dropped out of school after eighth grade, he said he “transferred to the public library.” 

Sykes used the resources of the Kansas City Public Library to blaze a path as a self-described “human rights worker.” His labors never earned him much money, but his activism resulted in national civil rights achievements. 

Notably, Sykes worked with U.S. Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) to inaugurate the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2008. The measure passed the House of Representatives with a 422-2 vote. His testimony before Congress and his lobbying efforts were widely credited with moving it through the Senate. 

The bill, signed into law by President George W. Bush, authorized $13 million annually to reopen unresolved civil rights cases. 

These are only three of the many, many stories known to Library staff members; the vast majority are known only to those who lived them. But one thing is clearer than ever: With a history extending through three centuries, the Kansas City Public Library has been committed to supporting patrons through literacy, intellectual freedom, and inclusion, each a key component of a healthy democracy and thriving populace. 

As the 150th anniversary celebrations come to a close, the Library offers its valued patrons a gift: complimentary copies of Kansas City's Public Library: Empowering the Community for 150 Years, available first to those who register for and attend the book launch event on Tuesday, October 8, then again on October 12 at the second annual Heartland Book Festival.