Karla Deel - Storied & Scandalous Kansas City: A History of Corruption, Mischief and a Whole Lot of Booze

I am grateful to Katherine ODell, acquisitions editor at Globe Pequot, who found me, believed in me, and encouraged me to write this book. Your guidance was infallible. Thanks to the entire editorial team.

To Michael Wells, and all the librarians in the Missouri Valley Special Collections in the Central Library in downtown Kansas Cityto me you are the gatekeepers of such treasures. Without your support and insight, Id not have made it very far in the writing of this book.

Thanks to the Jackson County Historical Society for bringing me on board and continuing to nurture my love of our regional history. A special thanks to Steve and Marianne Noll who continue to inspire this path. Thanks to Brent Schondelmeyer for his unwavering support of all my endeavors.

Special thanks to my favorite history-loving partner in crime, Bill Nicks. Thanks for all the good times, my friend.

A great deal of love and thanks to the man who taught me the value and weight of words and that it takes real work to succeed. Bob Stewart, editor-in-chief of New Letters magazine, thank you for your willingness to be a poet and to witness the world as a poet. It is through you that I gained a ferocious desire to live in such a way that I will never be far away from duende.

Steve Paul, a writer whom I respect greatly. Thank you for your thoughtful foreword to this book and for your support, help, and readiness to really show up for me.

But most of all, where would I be without the ones who really see me and provide the daily billows that keep me afloat? To my darling daughter, Salem Deel, and my best friend and sister, Kelli Dakan: You are the songs in my soul.

To my mother and father, I am extraordinarily lucky to be your daughter.

Fathomless thanks to the storytellers and history keepers before me, the ones who also thought our citys history worth celebrating and preserving, and from whose works Ive sourced here. We have a shared goal: To help preserve the vision of those who came before us so that later we might inspire others to preserve our vision for the future of this city.

Every place has a story to tell. Someone had the vision, someone laid the bricks. Real sweat and love went into building everything we enjoy today. And it takes even more sweat and love to keep these things here. We are in communion, always, with what came before us.

It is without hesitation that I dedicate this book to the men, women and children of the Hopewell, Missouria, Otoe, Kansas, Pawnee, Osage and other indigenous people who loved this area and cultivated and lived in harmony with the surrounding land for centuries along the lower Missouri River Valley. Your wisdom and intricate understanding of the land bestowed incredible knowledge upon the settlers. And to the brave pioneer families who travelled hours over an often treacherous river to stand on the banks of a natural levee on the Missouri River and stare into the thick, untamed, canopies of hickory, oak and walnut, and who, despite all the challenges, had a clear vision of creating a thriving community along the river. They created from nothing a home for themselves, and grew a city from the ground up.

Every one of us carries every bit of our individual histories around with us everywhere we go. From what we find extraordinary in the ordinary to what wed fight to keep safe or to destroy, we carry these things around with an almost animal-like yearning that demands the world take notice of what we carry.

Alderman Jim Pendergast, MA thesis, Lyle Wesley Doresett, University of Kansas City, 1960.

Ghosts in the Heart of America, State Historical Society of Missouri-Columbia, 1938, pendergastkc.org.

The Long Struggle Over Black Voting Rights and the Origins of the Pendergast Machine, in Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era. Edited by Diane Mutti Burke, Jason Roe, and John Herron, pendergastkc.org.

Only a Bootlegger, Future Magazine, Kansas City, MO, April 12, 1935. U.S. vs. John Jenkins, Edmund B. OBrien, Pete Wilson Brummet, et al.: Indictment, original document, pendergastkc.org.

Wyandotte Chief (Kansas City, KS), May 15, 1913.

Zinn, Howard, History Is a Weapon, A Peoples History of the United States (, The Intimately Oppressed), New York, Harper Collins, 1980.

Brown, Theodore, Frontier Community, Kansas City to 1870, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, MO, 1963.

Burke, Mutti, On Slaverys Border, Missouris Small Slaveholding Households, 18151865, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2010.

Cordley, Laws Respecting the Sale of Spiritous Liquors, The CongregationalTelephone (Manhattan, KS), August 1, 1891, 2.

Doerschuk, Albert, Westport, a Memory, by Daughters of Old Westport Guild, Kansas City, MO, 1917.

Fulton County News (McConnellsburg, PA), January 24, 1907, 3.

Hanzlick, K. David, Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Womens Activism in KansasCity, 18701940, Columbia, University of Missouri, 2018.

Industries of Kansas City: Historical, Descriptive and Statistical, Kansas City, MO, J. M. Elstiner & Co. Publishers.

Manon, Calvin, When Kansas City Celebrated Slaverys End, Kansas City Times, July 22, 1965.

Martin, Donna, Kansas City And All Thats Jazz, Kansas City Jazz Museum, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999.

Ostertage, Margaret, Old Westport, Kansas City Historical Society, originally published Kansas City, MO, ca. 1941.

Rodert, Emil C., Hash, Stories of Old Westport, Kansas City, MO, ca. 1933.

Roe, Jason, We Play the Pallas, Missouri Valley Special Collections, kchistory.org/week-kansas-city-history/we-play-pallas.

Schirmer, Sherry Lamb, Historical Overview of the Ethnic Communities of KansasCity, Kansas City, MO, Pan-Educational Institute, 1976.

Slavery 1860, Kansas City Star, December. 28, 1902.

Springfield News-Leader (Springfield, MO), May 28, 1981, 42.

Stone, Jeffrey C., Slavery, Southern Culture, and Education in Little Dixie, Missouri18201860, New York, London, Routledge, 2006.

Topeka State Journal (Topeka, KS), September 15, 1897, 1.

Westport Ordinances, The Ordinances in Force in the Town of Westport, MO., 1869, Excelsior Book.

Border Star (Columbus, KS), June 16, 1883, 1.

Checking Commercialized Vice in Kansas City, pamphlet, produced by Suppression of Commercialized Vice, April 15, 1921.

Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1880.

Chief of Police report, Kansas City, MO, August 9, 1932.

Clifford-Napoleone, Amber R., Prostitution and Reform in Kansas City, 18801930, in The Other Missouri HistoryProstitution and Reform in Kansas City, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 2004.

Clifford-Napoleone, Amber R ., Queering Kansas City Jazz: Gender, Performance and the History of a Scene, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, November 2018.

Driggs, Frank and Chuck Haddix, Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop, a History, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Hicks, John Edward, Adventures of a Tramp Printer, 18801890, Midamericana Press, reprint 1950.

Kansas City Gazette (Kansas City, KS), Tuesday, July 17, 1894.

Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, Kansas City, an American Story, Kansas City Star Books, First Edition, 1999.

Lawrence Daily Journal (Lawrence, KS), Wednesday, October 9, 1895, 2.

Lee, Fred L., Annie Chambers High-Toned Brothel, The Kansas City Genealogist, Vol. 38, No. 2, Fall 1997.

Londr, Felicia Hardison,