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

FAIN: BH-293767-23

University of Missouri, Kansas City (Kansas City, MO 64110-2235)
Diane Louise Mutti Burke (Project Director: February 2023 to August 2023)
Diane Louise Mutti Burke (Project Director: August 2023 to present)
Sandra Enriquez (Co Project Director: August 2023 to present)

Two week-long workshops focused on the “Golden Age” of the 1920s and 1930s in Kansas City for a total of 72 K-12 teachers and museum educators.  

Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression is a K-12 Teacher and Museum Educator week-long workshop that connects recent scholarship, historic sites, and cultural resources to examine the significance of the 1920s and 1930s in US history. These were particularly vibrant years in Kansas City, sometimes described as the city's "Golden Age." The economy boomed and culture flourished, yet these events were intertwined in a political, social, and economic landscape fraught with notorious machine politics, vice, and long histories of diverse peoples fighting for their rights and freedoms. Much of what played out in Kansas City is a reflection of the larger cultural and historic forces that shaped this era in US history. The workshop includes visits to the National WWI Museum and Memorial, the Truman Library and Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum, and the Guadalupe Center.