Despite her success in the 1930s, Dana Suesse’s music remains underappreciated. From piano concertos infused with jazz to popular film music, Suesse was a woman of great musical prowess.

Armada con una grabadora, la bibliotecaria de Kansas City, Irene Ruiz, capturó la evolución de la historia del vecindario de Westside e hizo de la biblioteca un lugar más acogedor para los inmigrantes mexicanos y latinos que vivían allí. Hoy en día, la sucursal del vecindario de Westside la Biblioteca Pública de Kansas City, que cuenta con la sólida colección de idioma español que Ruiz comenzó, lleva su nombre en su honor.

Armed with a tape recorder, Kansas City librarian Irene Ruiz captured the evolving history of the Westside and made the library a more welcoming place for the Mexican immigrants and Latinos who lived there. Today, the Westside branch of the Kansas City Public Library — featuring the robust Spanish language collection that Ruiz began — is named in her honor.

The American dance craze known as 'the cakewalk' began as a form of resistance by enslaved Black people — a showy promenade that concealed a mockery of slave owners. Now, modern devotees are marking the life of its most charismatic and famous champion, Kansas City’s own Doc Brown.

Thousands of people took over the small town of Sedalia, Missouri, in 1974 for the Ozark Music Festival, a party full of nudity, drugs and rock 'n roll music. People still talk about the lore from that hot wild weekend. Depending on what side of the festival fence you were on, it was three days of heaven — or three days of hell.

The landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools may have played out differently if it hadn’t been for a tenacious group of women in Johnson County, Kansas, who led their own integration lawsuit five years earlier. The case centered around a two-room schoolhouse and included a lengthy boycott, big-shot NAACP lawyers, FBI surveillance — and six very brave children.

Once seen as a musical relic, audio cassettes have survived the eras of CDs and streaming to win over music lovers of a new generation. That’s in large part thanks to the National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri, the largest cassette manufacturer in the world.

Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world today. But few people remember the product that Nabisco blatantly ripped off: Hydrox. A creation of Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, Hydrox was billed as the “aristocrat of cookies,” with a novel combo of chocolate and cream filling. So why, more than a century later, is Hydrox still mistaken as a cheap knockoff?

In the late 1970s, a group of musicians in Topeka, Kansas, formed what became one of the first all-women mariachi bands in the country. Mariachi Estrella broke down barriers in a male-dominated music scene, before a deadly disaster almost ended the group for good. Decades later, the band’s descendants are ensuring their legacy shines on into the future.

When hip-hop hit Kansas City streets, the effect was immediate. The new sound took over record stores, local high schools and underground dance parties. As the country celebrates 50 years of the art form, Kansas City honors its own contributions to the culture.

After dying suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Kansas City philanthropist Thomas Swope became the focus of one of the most publicized murder trials of the early 20th century. It’s long been suspected that Swope’s nephew-in-law murdered him and other members of his family as part of a plot to steal their fortune — but the events remain unresolved more than 110 years later.

Alvin Brooks has served as a bridge in Kansas City for decades — as one of the city’s first Black police officers, an educator, a civil rights leader, a founder of Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, and almost a Kansas City mayor. Today he’s still on call 24/7 for whenever anyone needs help. As he asks everyone to mark their calendars for his 100th birthday in 2032, he looks back to his earliest days in Kansas City.