All Library locations will be closed Sunday, April 20, for Easter.
Local History
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Monday, March 8, 2021
The Library's Missouri Valley Special Collections has two coloring books available for free download that celebrate...
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Friday, August 28, 2020
We’re celebrating the 100th birthday of Kansas City jazz legend Charlie Parker. Known as “Yardbird,” or just “Bird,” he was born in K...
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Friday, August 14, 2020
One hundred years ago the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women in the U.S. the hard-won right to vote. In co...
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Friday, July 3, 2020
Henry Perry, the man who first assumed the title of Barbecue King of Kansas City was born on March 16, 1874, in Shelby County, Tennes...
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Friday, May 29, 2020
For more than two decades, the Kansas City Landmarks Commission has donated hundreds of historical images to the Library’s Missouri Valley Speci...
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Saturday, February 22, 2020
One hundred years ago the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women in the U.S. the hard-won right to vote. In co...
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Thursday, October 3, 2019
It’s fall, y’all, and the Library is kicking off the Halloween season with a monstrously good mashup of haunted local history tales, scary story recom...
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Tuesday, August 27, 2019
This installment of “What’s Your KCQ” is a story of gambling, gangsters, and geography. Reader William Renegar wanted to know, “Was t...
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Friday, August 9, 2019
This week marks 43 years since Ralph Steadman visited a muggy Kansas City to cover the 1976 Republican National Convention for...
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Wednesday, March 20, 2019
As Kansas City International Airport breaks ground on a new terminal on March 25, 2019, the Library's Missouri Valley Special Collection...