Archiver

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 compa...

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 don...

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 movi...

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 t...

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 elec...

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 Burrou...

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.