Kansas City is often seen as a mild-mannered metropolis in the
heart of flyover country. But a closer look tells a different
story, one with roots in the city- complicated and colorful past.
The decades between World Wars I and II were a time of intense
political, social, and economic change-for Kansas City, as for the
nation as a whole. In exploring this city at the literal and
cultural crossroads of America, Wide-Open Town maps the myriad ways
in which Kansas City reflected and helped shape the narrative of a
nation undergoing an epochal transformation. During the interwar
period, political boss Tom Pendergast reigned, and Kansas City was
said to be "wide open." Prohibition was rarely enforced, the mob
was ascendant, and urban vice was rampant. But in a community
divided by the hard lines of race and class, this "openness" also
allowed many of the city's residents to challenge conventional
social boundaries-and it is this intersection and disruption of
cultural norms that interests the authors of Wide-Open Town.
Writing from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, the
contributors take up topics ranging from the 1928 Republican
National Convention to organizing the garment industry, from the
stockyards to health care, drag shows, Thomas Hart Benton, and, of
course, jazz. Their essays bring to light the diverse histories of
the city-among, for instance, Mexican immigrants, African
Americans, the working class, and the LGBT community before the
advent of "LGBT." Wide-Open Town captures the defining moments of a
society rocked by World War I, the mass migration of people of
color into cities, the entrance of women into the labor force and
politics, Prohibition, economic collapse, and a revolution in
social mores. Revealing how these changes influenced Kansas
City-and how the city responded-this volume helps us understand
nothing less than how citizens of the age adapted to the rise of
modern America.
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