Kansas City's Public Library: Empowering the Community for 150 Years

Related Organization: Kansas City Public Library

The history of the Kansas City Public Library is also the history of Kansas City. Missouri incorporated Westport Landing into the City of Kansas in 1853, then renamed it Kansas City in 1889 – and in between those years, in 1873, the Board of Education established the Library.

After the Civil War, the young town remained unrefined and rough. The economy and population were growing rapidly, but a scathing – and anonymous – column in The Kansas City Star voiced what many thought at the time: “We have nothing to attract people here; nothing to keep them here when they have a chance to come, and our undesirable reputation in that regard has spread out over the entire country.”

The Library’s digital history specialist, Jason Roe, discusses his new book Kansas City's Public Library: Empowering the Community for 150 Years, cowritten with historian Matt Reeves. Roe talks about why early Kansas Citians saw the founding and funding of a library as the best option for a cultural makeover and how that story played out over 150 years.