Archiver

KMBC radio was headquartered atop the swanky Pickwick Hotel in downtown Kansas City. The Pickwick was the place to stay for men doing business with the city and county. It was a favorite of Harry Truman when he was Presiding Judge of Jackson County. And while there were probably plenty of deals made by men in smoke-filled rooms, at KMBC they were thinking about and celebrating, women.

We kick off this season of Archiver on February 8th, 1941 at the Ivanhoe Temple in Kansas City. The Ivanhoe was home to much of the city’s musical talent but on Saturday nights it was home to the Brush Creek Follies which originated on KMBC in Kansas City.

It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.

It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.

It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.

It's been more than a half century since the start of the Vietnam War. Vietnam changed American politics, changed the US military and most importantly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.In this special Archiver series, we meet four Kansans who fall into that category. Four people who fought the war, not with claymore mines and grit, but with bandages, medicine, and pure compassion.

Literally from the moment Charles Finley bought The As, he wanted to move them out of Kansas City. He claimed otherwise but it was a lie. In 1967, he made it happen.

For most fans, it’s not just the players that conjure up memories of a team. The broadcasters are just as important.

You already know about Finley the showman; Charlie O The Mule, the exploding scoreboard, Kelly green and gold uniforms at a time everyone else wore white and gray, his lobbying for orange baseballs. Sounds like a real funster. But not at all. Finley had a mean streak, he was mercurial, dictatorial.

There just aren’t many songs about mules. But in the mid 60's (the exact release date is unknown) Charlie O' the Mule by Kansas City song writer and rockabilly performer Gene McKown was released. It’s about a Missouri mule that helped usher in a wild, complicated and, at times, maddening seven years of baseball in Kansas City.

In the 13 years the A’s were in Kansas City, they were simply terrible. But the A’s didn’t get this dismal without some help. It all goes back to the New York Yankees, and the unholy alliance between Yankee owners Del Webb and Dan Topping and their handpicked A’s owner Arnold Johnson.

The A’s were always an awful baseball team. But Municipal Stadium, well that was special to almost anyone who ever went.

While we all know the Monarch's place in baseball history—they won ten league championships and launched the big league careers of many black players–you might not know the role the A’s played in integrating blacks into the big leagues. 

1955 was also the year the A’s opened up a brief but important 13 year run in Kansas City. During those years, baseball fan emotions bounced from joyous to tumultuous to downright silly at times, but there’s no doubt the A’s moving to Kansas City from Philadelphia changed the city’s image from a cowtown to a metropolis. 

It was one of the greatest conspiracies in sports history. One that would lead to turmoil in Kansas City, a congressional hearing and, eventually, one of the craziest owners in all of professional sports.

Archiver fans, get ready for a special season of the podcast. We’re leaving Kansas for now to tell a story that covers some of the most tumultuous years in baseball…but it’s more than just a sports story. This is about power, greed and corruption that went all the way to congress.

I want to take you back to August 19th, 1991. It’s 93 degrees and humid. Hundreds of anti-abortion protestors from around the country have gathered in Wichita. There’s nothing spontaneous about it, planning went on for weeks and eventually hundreds would swell to thousands. Most people, including the city’s three abortion clinics, the police and city officials, thought the whole thing would be done in a few days with a handful of arrests. But what came to be known as the Summer of Mercy stretched on for six tense weeks, resulted in 2,600 arrests and changed politics in Kansas in ways that we feel right this minute.

The Globetrotters have always been innovators. But perhaps the greatest innovation was in 1985 when they signed a woman, the first woman to ever play professionally with men. That woman was from Kansas, and she would not only change the game but become a hero to female athletes, to be sure, and probably many other young women.

We’re talking horse racing on this Archiver, something not associated much with Kansas. But for an amazing two minutes and four seconds in 1938, a horse from Johnson County was the top three-year-old in the land. Owned by a man who was better known for suits than stallions, and who had an odd connection to Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast.

Do you know the 1946 musical “The Harvey Girls?” It stars Judy Garland and in the film she sings one of the most famous show tunes of all times “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.” The movie is about Harvey House restaurants and the young women in their starched, white aprons and cuffs who went out west to feed hungry train travelers. The train must be fed, they sang in the movie. In fact, millions of people needed to be fed and, wouldn’t you know it, we figured out how to do it fast right here in Kansas.

This episode is about the Haskell Institute in Lawrence back when it was a boarding school for American Indians. Tens of thousands of school age Indians were forced into these boarding schools all across the country, many times kidnapped by soldiers or police. Kids would, naturally, run away from such semi-imprisonment. How could any of this be good? I have to admit upfront that I started out on this story absolutely sure how I was going to tell it. But I ended up in a very different place, and it’s a place that I’m not totally comfortable with.

This Archiver starts in 1984. Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum is running for reelection. Now with Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, you may not realize the uniqueness of a woman in the United States Senate in 1978. Depending on how you define it, Kassebaum was the first or second woman elected in her own right to the senate. Women in Kansas politics go back to before women could even vote in most elections. And, wouldn’t you know it, the very first women to be elected mayor of an American city was from Kansas.

Newspaper endorsements were crucial for political candidates, be it for president or city council. It’s less so now, but they’re still important. Even President Trump when he was a candidate met with the editorial boards of the Washington Post, New York Times and Chicago Tribune. 

This story starts with a tape that, until recently, was in a box at the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. Archiver historian Virgil Dean found it. 

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the civil rights movement knows about the lunch counter sit ins at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. But before Greensboro and Miami there was Dockum Drug Store in Wichita.

Archiver fans, get ready for another season of audio gems that tell the most surprising stories from Kansas history.

If you look around YouTube, you’ll find no shortage of videos featuring William S. Burroughs, the famous beat writer. One of the best videos shows rock ‘n roll hall of famer Patti Smith playing the acoustic guitar in Burroughs tiny bungalo in old east Lawrence. That’s Lawrence, Kansas. River City. #LFK This episode of the Archiver podcast is just as much about #Lawrence as it is about Burroughs. According to his closest friends and confidants, he changed Lawrence and Lawrence, well, let Burroughs be Burroughs.

As a kid, Ed Dwight never dreamed he might one day go to the moon, but he did fantasize about escaping life in Kansas. And it was that idea of escape that was so powerful for a young black man in the 50s.

John McLendon changed the way basketball is played forever with his "fast break" style, and he broke the color barrier for black athletes in the sport.

We start this episode of Archiver in 1918, the end of the first World War, because the way America treated those veterans would forever change the way the country takes care of its soldiers, sailors and marines. Make no mistake, it would take decades plus lots of pain and suffering to do the right thing, but it happened. And wouldn’t you know it, it took a Kansan to get it done.

While the Clutter murders are the best known in Kansas history, they aren’t the most infamous and certainly not the most bizarre. The killers were eventually put to death, but the state hasn't always been in favor of the death penalty. In fact, Kansas has struggled with the capital punishment for most of its history.

For most, 1968 would feel like the United States was coming apart at the seams: The Tet offensive in Vietnam, wild political conventions and assassinations: First King then Senator Robert Kennedy. Both great men would have ties to Kansas in 1968. Kennedy, as we talked about on a previous Archiver, gave his first speech in Kansas after he announced his presidential run. King would start his year at Kansas State University on January 19th at convocation in a jammed packed Ahearn Field House. King came away impressed and heartened by the students he met that day in Manhattan. But we didn’t know how impressed until decades later when hand written notes found in the suite jacket he was wearing the night he was shot surfaced. Notes directly tied to Kansas State. And his words that cold morning in Manhattan are as meaningful today as they were 48 years ago.For most, 1968 would feel like the United States was coming apart at the seams: The Tet offensive in Vietnam, wild political conventions and assassinations: First King then Senator Robert Kennedy. Both great men would have ties to Kansas in 1968. Kennedy, as we talked about on a previous Archiver, gave his first speech in Kansas after he announced his presidential run. King would start his year at Kansas State University on January 19th at convocation in a jammed packed Ahearn Field House. King came away impressed and heartened by the students he met that day in Manhattan. But we didn’t know how impressed until decades later when hand written notes found in the suite jacket he was wearing the night he was shot surfaced. Notes directly tied to Kansas State. And his words that cold morning in Manhattan are as meaningful today as they were 48 years ago.

Kansas hasn’t produced the number of presidents and presidential candidates as Virginia or New York but Kansans, both famous and obscure, have played an important role. We’ve had a war hero, a millionaire, a prohibitionist and a communist run for president. We’ll talk about all of them, but we will focus on the 1996 Bob Dole campaign against Bill Clinton, which touched on things we’re still grappling with in 2016. It will sound familiar. Except for how it ends.

In 1936 the federal government released a film. They called it a documentary, but it was mostly propaganda. Many would argue that its cause was noble rather than sinister. Others, as we’ll see, would vehemently disagree. But to understand why the federal government got into the propaganda film business.

After the floods of 1951, a small valley in Kansas finds itself "invaded" when the Army Corps of Engineers decides to build a dam.

We take it as a matter of fact now that sports are big business. Professional sports are a huge business, but almost all the rest are at at least big. College coaches make millions of dollars for coaching and millions more for shoe endorsements, TV, and camps. But it wasn’t always this way. We were reminded of that by a recently discovered radio broadcast from New Year’s Eve, 1939 on WOR.

Archiver returns September 8th for season 2.

If 2016 is the most tumultuous presidential election year you’ve ever seen that simply means you weren’t alive or paying attention in 1968.

I want to tell you about a scandal. Fred Hall was an ambitious but unpopular governor among the GOP elite in Kansas in the 50s. He would go on to find himself on the outskirts of the party. Hall would eventually go directly to the people on TV and he would change politics and the legal system in Kansas in a way we that we are feeling right this minute.

If I were to tell you about a millionaire running for high political office that found his fame in the media, and financed himself through somewhat sketchy endeavors, a man who worked outside of the regular political channels and who seemed to be constantly battling the establishment, you would probably say, I know who that is, Donald Trump. But long before Trump, or Ross Perot, or Michael Bloomberg for that matter, there was Dr. John R. Brinkley.

Archiver is a tour through the most important moments in Kansas history with host, Sam Zeff. Using archival tape, our show will pull you into the world of these events while explaining how they still affect us today. The show is supported by a grant from The Kansas Humanities Council.