Beau Brummel Club

In 1920s Kansas City, hotel ballrooms, restaurants, and nightclubs teemed with crowds excited to hear the region’s signature jazz sound and eager to take advantage of the city’s lax alcohol prohibition enforcement. By visiting “Paris of the Plains,” as the city was nicknamed, one could enjoy performances of everything from vaudeville to Shakespeare, or even one of the newly invented motion pictures. For Black Kansas Citians, however, some of whom had served their country in WWI and visited the real Paris in France, much of their hometown was closed off to them. The Beau Brummel Club stepped in to help improve the social and civic lives of Black veterans and civilians. A reader asked What’s Your KCQ? to investigate the club’s history.