Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression

FAIN: BH-267146-19

University of Missouri, Kansas City (Kansas City, MO 64110-2235)
Diane Louise Mutti Burke (Project Director: February 2019 to May 2022)

Two one-week workshops for 72 K-12 teachers using Kansas City as a case study for examining the changes in American society in the 1920s and 1930s.

Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression is a NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for K-12 Teachers that explores historical landmarks and cultural resources in light of recent scholarship in order to better understand these pivotal decades in United States history. The 1920s and 30s were particularly vibrant years in Kansas City, sometimes described as the city's "Golden Age." City boosters claimed a new position of economic dynamism and culture flourished, most notably resulting in Kansas City becoming a key site in the development of American jazz. Yet, all of these events were intertwined in a political, social, and economic landscape fraught with notorious machines politics, vice, and long histories of people fighting for their rights and freedoms. Much of what played out in Kansas City are a reflection of the larger cultural and historic forces that shaped this era in US history.