Local History Blog

Thanks to the 2018 film "Green Book," many know of "The Negro Motorist Green Book," published annually for 30 years beginning in 1936. The guidebooks provided Black travelers a list of businesses, restaurants and lodgings that would welcome them…

Bowling first appeared in the metro area in the late 19th century. Advertisements for bowling alleys in the city proper and in Wyandotte (what is now Kansas City, Kansas) were printed in The Kansas City Star and Times as early as 1884, though…

We're putting the spotlight on some of our favorite special collections in a new video series from the Missouri Valley Special Collections. First up? The Mrs. Sam Ray Postcard Collection (SC58). Watch and learn how a septuagenarian became Kansas…

Reader Mike McGrew wrote to KCQ and asked, "Has there ever been a velodrome constructed in Kansas City? I understand there was a nationwide wave of competitive cycling races in the late 19th and early 20th century." Here’s what we found.

Beginning at the age of 72, longtime Kansas Citian and avid postcard collector Mildred Kittle Ray began writing her "Postcards from Old Kansas City" columns for the Kansas City Times and the Kansas City Star newspapers. For nearly 30 years, Ray…

The Kansas City Public Library is pleased to announce the addition of 1,109 digitized yearbooks to our digital history site KCHistory.org. Resulting from more than two years of work by Missouri…

In this week’s installment of “What’s your KCQ,” a nostalgic reader asks: “What was the name of the upscale restaurant in the downtown Kansas City airport? I remember eating there as a kid about 50 years ago.”