We will explore the history of this midwest city parent coming up, the sinking of the steamboat, one of the many to sink on the dangerous waters of the Missouri River. It sank within minutes. 150 passengers on board were terrified and no one died. But they lost all the freights , goods and cargoes belongings. Third 132 years until the until we dug it up. Nationalter, visit the world war i museum and memorial and see a collection of posters involved in the comments in the conflict. True socialere the media of the day. Really what they meant to the various countries. With thein our look mayor, james. Isphysically, keep it 480,000 people spread across the 318 square miles, about 1460 per square mile. 30 smart when you get down to it. Roughly 30 africanamerican, 11 latino, 5 various mixes of immigrants and cultures there. The rest, caucasian. Kansas city has a variety of neighborhoods and an extremely sophisticated purpose and culture, things people might not expect. ,e have tremendous sports teams variety, music, and barbecue. One thing i can tell you is all cities have similar problems. We have issues to deal with with crime. Too many guns on the street, gunfire once, we have to do it that by educating kids. If we have fewer options and then we feel hopeless. Easy access to guns. We had all the things other cities had. Panthers, Civil Rights Movement, drug culture the mtv at face, everything was here all at one time. One thing i learned about kansas city is pretended to be softer on all those issues than others. Renatas fast and we can together to put those out and move forward. We learned how to get along with each other but we still remained in my mind and opinion, to segregated. We have to do more to bring people together across color barriers. We are working on it seriously. Growing up in a time and in the city where there was a lot of conflict and watching how the city dealt with at conflict in a way that kept together without falling apart and moving forward. Our caper Cable Partners worked with the city cspan. Aurus when we traveled the world war i museum and memorial showcases one of the largest collections of world war world. E learn more about kansas city all weekend here on American History tv. The Baseball Museum in kansas city, missouri. Here, we document the story of lack baseball in america in general and the professionally negro league specifically. Thisnly difference in ballpark is you will need heroes. The first thing you see is the field. Legends hearld of it as you can see, in my baseball diamond that houses 10 or 12 life sized sculptures. The significance of those cast and positioned as if they were playing a game is they represent 10 of the first group of players to be inducted in the National Baseball hall of fame. That is how allstar teams are chosen pair looking in his the late great john buck oneil. The only one of our staffers not in the International Hall of fame. My believe is he should be, but in this capacity, the cofounder of the Baseball Museum, managing this great allstar team, so our guests come in and through chicken wire and see an incredible display and we hope that invokes the desire that i cant wait to get out there and walk amongst the statues. Wethe Baseball Museum, segregate you from the field. We want our visitors to remotely experience what segregation was like. In the case of great athletes, knowing full well they could make the leaks, so close to it and yet so far from it. You can see the field but cannot get to it. The only way you are allowed to take the field, you have to earn that right. Learning that story. By the time you bear witness to everything they endorsed just to play baseball in this country, the very last thing that happens is now you can. Let me introduce you to ruth foster, a genius. Lace ineeting that took ymca, the building still stands right around the corner from where the museum currently operates. It is contingent of eight independent blackball team owners to form the First Successful organized baseball league. The team would go on to operate amazingly for 40 years from 1920 until 1960. Jack robinson breaks the baseball color barrier but 13 years after he breaks baseballss color barrier, there are still operating with a relatively good deal of success. Because it took Major League Baseball 12 years before every team had at least one black baseball player. Without question, the greatest baseball mind this sport has ever seen and virtually no one knows anything about it even though he is rightfully in the National Baseball hall of fame. The romantict in nature of the heroic and courageous courageous athletes who overcame a verse root adversity to play the game they love, Major League Baseball was a thriving country. E in this the impact it had in this was probably greater than any other during the time in the Africanamerican Community. Welcome to the hotel, a prime example. Here in the historic jazz district. It was not a travesty to have to stay at that hotel. If you are black and visited kansas city, it is it one of the few places a lepers and have to stay in a hotel and it is by far the most majestic of their hotels or motels that are here. On any given day and might see on these chairs, they are at time the fastest man in the world, jesse owens. Oh hampton. Surrounded by members of the john bucky monarchs, oneil was managing at that time, and he said on the bench and served as honorary coach. Beautiful lean of throwing out the first pitch at her allstar game. The legendary jazz musician had his own semipro snap baseball team. So do louis armstrong. All the jazz musicians wanted to be Baseball Players and all the Baseball Players wanted to be jazz musicians. It was only fitting they should come here but you had the best of both worlds. Jazz and baseball. Kansas city was jumping. A jazz musician could get a gig in kansas city where he could becauselse in the world all the nightclubs had music, clubs galore here, so this place was wide open. Baseball and jazz intersected. An intrinsic mixture of jazz and baseball made it one of the most one of the best anywhere in the world. Here we had the irony of young black soldiers dying the city fighting the same in another country that we were asked to accept here. National pastime. The sentiment was fitting. If they could die fighting for beir country, they ought to able to play baseball in this country. That led to Jackie Robinson being handpicked from the great kansas city monarchs. The end of the 45 season contract to play in the dodgers organization. On april 15, 19 47, he would make the monumental walk on the as a member of the brooklyn dodgers for changing baseball and this country. There is no question that the breaking of the color barrier is one of the most significant events in American History. The museum makes the bold assertion that robinsons breaking of the color barrier was not just a part of the Civil Rights Movement. That was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1947. More notedbefore the civil rights occurrences. It is before brown v. Board of education and before rosa parks refusal to move to the back of the bus. As my dear friend buck oneil would poetically say, dr. Martin was a sophomore when robinson signed the contract. President truman would not integrate military until after jackie. So this is what started the ball of social progress in our country. It is bittersweet. Bitter because i am not sure the Africanamerican Community was aware of what was losing when we lost the negro leagues. It had been greatly impactful helping to create the dynamics of thriving black culture. When we lost the negro leagues, we lost a lot of that. Segregation mandated ownership here with integration, we did lose that. The degree of ownership that was prevalent during that era of i dont know if we would see that level of ownership again. I hope that we lost a lot. The soul of our country and also the integration of the sport was triggered in our society and a broader fashion. It was good for the soul of the country and moved us in ways that socially i do not think we had fathomed was possible. It was devastating economically. We finally make our way to the field where we are greeted by a uniform display and incredible lifesize broad sculptures of negro league greats anchored on the mound by lee roy page. Few if any ever did better than the legendary lee roy page. Who at the negro leagues teach us is very simple. And believeto dream in yourself, you could do or be anything you want to be. These athletes dreams to play baseball. They had no idea they were making history. They did not care about making history. Wanted to play ball. The passion, perseverance, determination, and courage they demonstrated would not only change the sport. It changed the country for the better. All weekend, American History tv is featuring kansas city, missouri. Visitedity tour staff sites showcasing its history. First professionals films began a studio where he making cartoons. It went bankrupt in 1923. Learn more all weekend here on American History tv. Posters in world war i with a true social media the day. Radio and theyr were used by all the belligerent countries in the war to impress their ideas upon the passerby and make them do things the government wanted them to do. Regard posters as propaganda but a lot of them were used for the for exit they were featuring in them hall in world war i memorial, showing a variety of posters for many of the Different Countries that produced them during the war. They were not only incredible artworks, and many Famous Artists produced these for the end of the work, but they were also representing countries, ideas of the countries, and they represented really what the were meant to the various countries that produced the posters. Poster. E is a french the french used not so much patriotic themes, but a lot in the posters. In this one, we see the child and theld by its mother picture of the lost father up above. The mother is consoling the child. It is getting people to give because the war effort the countries did not have a big pot of money sitting around and waiting to fight a war. They had to raise money. The french were conscious of using this kind of appeal to the people. That,uded it because of showing how children were used in the advertising of the they cannd also that represent many aspects of society that they were showing in the poster. When americans got into the war they created an agency to produce information that could be sent out to the public. With a committee on public information, in charge of having posters produced for the war effortinformation,. Americans, when they started producing posters especially for fundraising, they use a lot of the symbols that they represented america. In this poster for a second liberty loan, you see the statue of liberty. You see the american flight and the waves and waves of america soldiers going off to fight. The main symbol of inns this time was uncle sam. Though uncle sam had been a symbol of the United States since the war of 1812, it really came to the forefront representing the american war effort. At a lot of the american posters, a lot of the images are in multiples. You see the soldiers marching in the airplanes that are flying. Especially airplanes because when americans went to fight, we did not have airplanes really here and we used british and french and italians airplanes. Artistic license could be taken in producing the posters. Colorful ande more more action oriented, they tended to get more information out to the people. The next poster on exhibit that we see is a recruiting poster for the United States marines. It is pretty basic. We wanted them to join us. It represented the marines as the fighting force that would lead the american effort during the war. 1917, this was equated back to the spirit of 1776, wealth when the american was ation began, and this very important aspect of advertising and images used on but theyer were prewar dusted them off and got them back to use with the beginning of the american effort in world war i. Probably my favorite poster in exhibition is a very futuristic poster. It not only has an incredible image of this machine that would end the war, a real dream that machines could win a war and not have to use the human effort, but the interesting thing about this poster besides incredible french, showing this machine going across and killing all the german soldiers, running in panic before it, is that it was not really produced by the government. If not for a government effort, this was by far a periodical article written about the idea of having machines so this advertised the sale of the periodical. In its function and production, it is right different from the other posters on exhibit here. This is a u. S. Recruiting poster from the war. It is one of the most interesting images to me because it shows various allies of the United States and their navy and how they really want the americans to join in with them. The poster is called altogether. Sailor, aapanese french sailor, and american sailor holding his ubiquitous course, and the french and british sailor, russian and italian. It is very different in that it represented all of the allies ae french and british sailor, russian and italian. The americans were fighting in the war with. During world war i, the japanese with the United States, australia, new zealand, great written in france, and one of their main efforts during the war involved the navy. They acted as escorts for the new zealand and australian in the middleight east and on the western front. They were the Escort Service for them. That is part of the history of world war i that a lot of people do not know about. Japanese visitors we had come here to the museum, it is always interesting to them to see that history and it is represented throughout the museum. A major role on the american homefront in aiding keep all getting people to save weight and take their products to be and to actually help the environment and the war , order now and get ahead thoughgame because products were not necessarily rationed, they were in short supply and coal was one of these. At that time, the coal was. Elivered by horses it is interesting the number of posters that features horses because horses were a major form for the United States in world war i even though cars and trucks were in use, horses played a major role on the homefront and the battlefront. The poster is interesting is reallye artwork expressive and shows posters not only advertising works of media but also works of art. Of the few posters we have in the Museum Collection is a german poster that is again a fundraising poster asking people to give to the war effort. It is featuring the german soldier representative of the iron germany at the time to get folks to give money to the war effort. Problem with the german posters is they have not survive over. He years since world war i that is one area in the museum, even though we have a large collection, that we are actively collecting still, the german posters and posters from russia and also balkans and areas like that. Our collection is organic and we like to represent that in the special exhibition. As part of the memorial social media efforts, we were featuring thisof the posters in exhibition. Public interaction with the exhibition. We asked our visitors in the social media outlet to vote on have anhe posters to seen in the exhibition. One of the posters was voted on by a nice lady who lives in kansas city and she herself was a veteran in world war ii. Thatoted for the poster featured the horse. Help save the horses and horses were of course a major aspect of the war effort and really were not treated very well. Wanted it in the exhibition because her father had in in world war i and she told her family stories about how she had worked on them. Basically, that was the vote that pushed it over and we included this poster even though it is a fairly small poster in relation to the other posters in the exhibition. It also gave a human feeling to it the posters represented in world war i. This exhibit gives us the whole munition one type of used in the war was not necessarily one that was tired or one dropped from an air lane. It was one presented to the get theirreally involvement in the war effort. Is the takeaway out like for people to have, that they enjoy what they are seeing and werealso take that these very important objects of the time and they really teach us the lessons of world war i. All weekend long, american is enjoying our Cable Partners to showcase kansas city, missouri. Cspan. Orgre, visit cities tour. We continue with our look at the history of kansas city. The political machine boss of kansas city really in control 21939. 29 19. 5 the political machine got its ,tart with the older brother who came to kansas city in the started establishing this machine in the first war of kansas city, and the industrial west bottoms down in the river. There was an irish community, after an american community, it was very diverse. A lot of workingclass people. He had saloons and he had, he went basically precinct to precinct holding a machine based on favorite. Civil get healthy jobs in exchange for votes, helping people through giving them loans, you do not have to get a formal tank loan and jim would loan the money settling gambling debts, illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution and so forth. He was getting older and his health was failing. Brother got started around 1900s. He was elected and in charge of streets in the early years of the 1900s. He was really in the position to take a for the machine by the time jim died in 1911. Hashe legacy of the family been beat up and twisted and turned so many times over the years. Today, people do not understand who he was and what he did, both good and bad. What a lot of people do not his rathertom and and seven other siblings were daughters and came here as workingclass young men who came here for jobs in the city. Through sheer popularity, from the first war, a really influential war with immigrants and africanamericans all over the world, they had grown up in a poverty themselves and empathized with work people. Tom followed his rather jim into politics and became a Deputy Constable for city courts and eventually became took on positions in the county and took over in 1910 as a city councilman, just like his rather had in. The trajectory of kansas city and the economy with a burgeoning immigrant group coming in and people looking for work, tom built his kingdom if you will, his political kingdom, on serving the underserved people. Tangible, promises that will save the world and make the country prosperous for everyone, tom through the years delivered tangible inks for people who needed them, whether it was medicine, coal, food, and more portly, chops. He learned early on that the way to a persons heart is through dignity and with the job comes dignity, especially in the depression era where so many people were out of work raising families, he knew the best thing he could do for a lifetime of favors returned is sick at that person a job, help that person get a job. A political machine, i with theo describe it act of doing favors in exchange for votes. When you boil it down to base elements, that is what it amounted to. Is being tied into organized crime and other illicit activities, taking bribes and kickbacks. And using influence to make sure your preferred candidates are elected. Once you control the city 1925, the machine have full control of over the city. They have five out of Nine City Council members handpicked by tom, and through the city council, they appointed henry mcelroy, city manager. Wascity manager position more powerful than any other at the time. Whenever they did City Construction projects, macro would make sure the contracts went to at the time. Whenever they did City Construction projects companies. He owns mostly construction everythingbasically mix ofnt, to ready companies, one of his piglets. He had Insurance Companies and , andr companies of course officially at least, they changed to Beverage Companies during the prohibition at the time. All of these city contracts went through mcelroy back to him and he gets the money. A circle of money and he is always getting his cuts and people affiliated with the machine would get their cut. With the exchange, he gets a lot of votes. The not trying to justify legacy of phot fraud and government control. I want to balance it with the fact that kansas city would not either city today if it had not been for tom. He helped funnel money in in the depression, and a 10 year plan, he used tax dollars to put people to work, and building a lot of these major structures in city hall, the courthouse, the auditorium, these things became , which heks projects helped control. He even split jobs during the depression. And he got us through the depression. The underworld in the other pocket. Influence and a lot of good things in life pockets at the same time. The power actually went statewide. They had influence for the state of missouri representation of the Democratic National tension in the 1930s. He eventually selected truman to be the senator for missouri. He was elected in a statewide point, iat this believe the number that he could produce about 70,000 fraudulent in a given election at this time. Of votes thater he could produce out of kansas city that would be tallied, they were official whether they were real or not. Power to do this. At a time of extreme prejudice , the ku920s in 19 30s klux klan was in kansas city for a convention. 10,000 hooded in a parade down main street or grand avenue. While in the convention, one of goodbye, yourere, crooked game has got to go. They were referring to tom and joe, sometimes ally and sometimes better on the political scene locally. One reason the ku klux klan targeted Tom Pendergast is he was later described as a man of opportunity were asked to treated after americans as voters first and foremost. He helped any group that needed it as long as they were , and that is vote another side of the machine that maybe was not copied or replicated in other cities. He reached out and worked with different communities. Black and white, when it came to election day. Everyones vote was the same. Eventually in the late 1930s, he got involved in an insurance kickback scheme. Clear whether he broke the law with the scheme itself. Im not a lawyer and cannot we met. Where he ran into trouble is he did not report the income to the irs on his tax returns. Just like al capone, it was the irs that caught up with Tom Pendergast. He died in 1939 he went to jail in the federal penitentiary. Tom pendergast was nothing by this point, by 1945. He died of natural causes. Funeral. Me to his furman, who just became the Vice President , came to the funeral of Tom Pendergast during wartime on a military plane. It a controversy. Weeks later, roosevelt died and truman was president of the United States. Chairman could never completely distance himself from the background, and he owned it and said Tom Pendergast always kept and he was not going to abandon his friend. To complicate that. I have done a little bit of that in this interview. Website thatng a will include, we currently had about 9500 scans of original documents. We had letters of people who had written to one another back then. I mentioned court cases of voter fraud and the interactive website that will combine the original documents with his scholarship. We reached out in 2015 to 18 different percent professors for Museum Professionals who have produced fulllength articles. Ideas or new topics that have not and for in any kind of depth. Versions,ng website public audiences, those would go on the website. Together paidl be you read the essay and you can that and see the documents support the research. The court cases that put Tom Pendergast in jail. Courtabout as dry as a case might sound if you think about everything that was going on at the time. The scope is focusing on Tom Pendergast and then exploring the implications of machine role in kansas city especially in the 1920s and 30s at their peak. Heavyhanded guys who convince you to vote the right way, yes, he did. A the same time, it was like patriarchy, a father figure, almost, a robin hood sort of figure. He used the cash he made from bribes and kickbacks, to put people to work and provide services here and i interviewed a guy who remembered growing up in the 1930s. He had a younger sibling who died at maybe the age of three. He said we were poor and dad was out of work and he said we have weuneral and the casket and buried our little brother and went to the moratorium to pay for it and they said, mr. Tom pendergast, sorry are taking care of it. Loyalty. S lifetime when times are tough and people are poor, they do not care about officeitics or who the holder is. They care how they would eat the fifth feed the family. With settlement of the western United States picking up, the Missouri River was the important artery for the transportation of goods. The trip was not without its hazards. Sinking andhe efforts to recover it after it went down. It was believed in the early days of the river that steam boating in this was impossible. It was a shallow and fast river. Three to five years is the average life of a steamboat on the river. It is dangerous. Into the mud it went and it lay there buried 100 32 years until we dug it up. It was built in 1853 in pennsylvania, travel to ohio from the mississippi. At the time the 18 at five cam onto the Missouri River and traveled until it sank. The extractor behind myself is the stern section. On the back, the writer. It would go upstairs to the house, it would turn the arm and turned the rubber and help steer the boat the boat. July travelers traveled on the main deck. 150 of them are terrified. They escaped by running to the top of the boat as it sank. Boat, bringing them to shore one vote at a time. They all arrived and no one died in the sinking. But they lost all the freight. Calledsouri river was the golden age of steamboats. More than ever before or since. Imagine yourself on a boat with family in 1856 and youre on your way west. The wood deck you were seeing is , 30size of 171 feet long feet wide. Meaning you had 20 feet tall one on the left and one on the right. Standing on the deck and looking across the Missouri River, that is the river traveler of 1856 would see of kansas city, main street. The warehouses. Along the riverfront. Would, and the wheel we have rebuilt, it turns just as you see. One on the left and one on the right. And 400 steamboat steamboats had sunk. No one knows how many. St. Louis to the far right and kansas to the far left. The names are those of the steamboats that thank here over the many years of boats traveled. 1820, they have been sinking ever since. We are in one of the larger galleries of the collection. Weve divided into different groups. Housewares, topics, and so forth. In the housewares section of the museum. You see behind me all of the different things. A lot of these could not be made yet the states. A lot of it was imported. The dish is mostly came from england. , knives, forks, all of that, came from england. Around the world, things came west on steamboats. Imagine yourself on the frontier having paid your money and you are expecting a steamboat to rise every day and you discover all of this has been lost and you are not going to get it and it will not be sold in stores in your personal things are gone. Im sure it was a bad day for those people. It has allowed us to keep these collections. Seeing hereou are have never had any food on them ever. There are no marks or scratches. They are pristine. The big ones, the next and the next, down to the small ones. It is remarkable to see, like ping back in time. I do not think of you for a spectacular dishes like what i am seeing. I think of old cups and saucers made of tin. While we found some of that, most of what we found, what you see here. We look work six or seven days a week. It was winter and it was cold and that was ok and we wanted it to be that way. The walls they did with doug deep to get down quickly. But it was not at all stable. In the cold winter nights and days, water would freeze to the wall and the strength allowed it to be safe enough for us but it was erasing its time. We had to finish this before it started to get warm. The banks get to cave in and it is no longer safe to be there. Offinish in the third week february. We were safe but it would not be a good place to be. Coming back to the cold temperatures of the winter days and night, better protected because of that. The dishes you see here would not. They would absorb enough moisture sitting in the water that to ask those it to the cold temperatures would allow them to freeze and break. Whenever you found dishes come you if they ran from where you found them in ring them into a warm and he did trailer to keep them protected and at night, we would transport them back and clean the midnight. We dug during the daytime and we arrived back at 8 00 and he froze and refroze think. Dishes, but all the organics and the leather and the wood and refrozen in blocks of ice to keep the airway and keep it cold. The artifacts we had not yet clean or frozen still for this day, the decrease in the back easy him. The shoes perhaps were one of the hardest things to do. Not particularly because so technical but mostly because it tedious and you take the shoes we found from the earth and the cotton had dissolved. They are Holding Together because they are packed in. You have to pull together the parts of the tram and all of that stuff. Back here, we watch and separate , clean the leather, and then resell the same. When reassembled, it goes into the place where it saturates. From there into the free star. Four months later, that is ready for display. Or months per shoe. Found about 4000 shoes and we are only about half done with shoes. Growing up, photography became a hobby. A lifelong passion. Love to do it still to this day. Without a box, opened it up and it is filled with bottles. Rhubarb, youies, could make a high. I could pictures of those and i looked at the photograph and i is the first that color photograph any photographer has taken of precivil war fruit in color. Big box, larger than the rest. We opened the door and it turned out it was the icebox where they kept the food cold in past years. Tray anda big copper on the tray were leftovers eaten on the boat the day that. It was the dinner serving tray we carried on the food tray for the folks. We have a last supper on display. 80 miles east of here now, there is a boat laying in the earth much like it that sank 15 years before this one september of 1841. The companyng for out of st. Louis. On the boat was indian trade river. Oing up the some things off in kansas city, going across all on the santa fe trail. Near colorado on the southeast corner. We did a core sample to confirm there was cargo on it. Onto the deck of the boat at 37 feet, you could feel the drill cut through the top of the boat. Whatever we would find purely found 150 gold fabrics, andmics, chunks of lard. Were pushing for this and not some time at. It will be a remark for collection. It would be hard to imagine anything better. I would not say the next vote or the next would be better. It will be different. It will be from a different time. The cargo will be every bit as revealing. Famed artist thomas called this his home for nearly 40 years. It included a studio in the back or he completed many of his work. Come inside and learn more about his personal life and his career. Welcome to the home. A Historic Site. It is where the famous painter from missouri lived from 1939 until 1975. He lived here in the last half of his life. Visiting his house, it is almost like they have stepped out for the day. You can take a peek around and see how they lived. He probably was the most famous painter from missouri. Most famous in the 1930 past 19 wiis. He is known for doing art called regionalism. Midwest and world sorts of scenes he paints. Seemsof American Labor that attends to be more the rural aspect of it. This core belief was common art for the common man. He does not become very famous for his career and area welltodo. Family from a political name for his great uncle thunder thomas hart denton. Tom cruise up surrounded by politics. His father was a successful lawyer where he was warned. His father was the u. S. District attorney. In 1896 when his test when he was seven, his father was elected sos family moves to washington dc for eight years. For him growing up in d. C. And coming back every summer, that will be so formative for him to experience the different , to move in the political, powerful orbit, but then come back and go to the Swimming Hole and float on the rivers and hike the hills. That is what he and up ended up painting a lot of as an adult or he would also travel around the country and take sketching trips in the spring and sometimes the fall. He would disappear or three or more five weeks and say im heading south, going west, heading down. He would hitchhike. He would catch a train and go to little farms stock at a country andch, visit a steel mill, sketch what he saw. A lot of sketches and details. He said whenever he wasnt drawing, he was inking about drawing. When they lived here, the house served as a gallery. You can make an appointment and you can come in by the artwork. You probably do not see palm tom, he is busy out in his studio at least until 5 00 at the cocktail hour. If you are here to buy it, you must be a big shot. The artwork did hang around here on the wall, there were hooks and nails to accommodate the changing artwork. Except for the peace that is behind me, which shows the sun and their dog, jake. That was never intended for sale. Tom becomes famous as a painter, and Christmas Eve in 1934, he was featured at Time Magazine and he was the first artist to become on the cover of time. A big break for him. He had become famous already but this is the popular and public attention and it turned him into a rock star painter. Almost everyone had heard of thomas. At this point, it is when he can write his own ticket and he is ahead of the Painting Department and given a commission to paint a mural. That is called the social history of misery. Uncles everyday sorts of folks. Not a military history either. General john, commanding general of world war i, one in missouri, not in that euro. Mural. Tom said the development state then the senator so it is the peoples history of misery that he paints in there. The master bedroom and it does become more and more his wifes bedroom. She was not in the best of health in the last several years. She had heart trouble. He stays up a little later at night, probably reading and then falling asleep. Rita is picking up after him as well. But rita was crucial to his success. She was the Business Manager who raised the children and handle the money. She was his cheerleader and tooted her adult life managing him and putting up with him and a lot of respect. He says she was a hard woman to live with but when i met her, i was a bomb and without her, i would still be ashe said no amed stand being married to him. She was from italy. She also said that he was a genius. Library. Ave bentons he was an avid reader. He could read italian. He did translations. Country boy not so much. He does do history famed history famed murals, he has history books. He has economics, history, james bond, readers digest, national s. Ographic, michener novel feminism. A little bit of everything. One of the important things about his career. Volumes of the history of the United States. He was very much it was very much a peoples history of the United States. Into the big much men of United States history. It is about the people. That affect at him. He started to work on a mural of thecalled the history United States but he painted almost like a textbook, in chapters and panels. See this painting his history murals as well. Also an excellent rider in his own respect. He wrote two autobiographies. The first one in 1937 an artist in america. The chapters are the west, the south, the mountains, the rivers, things like that. Because he is only 48 years old when he writes that, it is not so much how he paints, but what he paints about that. So he goes back with a technical autobiography, an american in art. That one, unfortunately, is out of print. Is attist in america most libraries. To my hed of his life was working on a third autobiography tentatively titled an intimate story. He was going to revisit some of those stories, put in more detail. We do have archived in our collection, some of the manuscripts from that. So, this here is on his typewriter with his handwritten notes, what i would do. So he is working on this unpublished autobiography. 1975. Ses away in so the house is built in 1903. Originally it was the scout building. Then it became a garage. And then he had this whole stable turned into his art studio and pretty much for benson all day every day is devoted to that. He was not just a sunday afternoon painter. This was his job. Come on in. In the house, it is completely furnished. It is his items. Is not really fancy. He has coffee cans for his brushes. He is using baby food jars for pigments. This from a stable into a studio, tom had one big adaptation made. He replaced the stable door. Constant, a soft, diffuse, indirect source of life. Tom benton died in this room. He was 85 years old. He had been working on a small mural for the Country Music hall being established in nashville. With theaving trouble train and could not get it to come out quite right. He tells his wife, i think its enough. Dinner, came going to go back in the studio. He comes back out here, had a massive heart attack and dropped dead. Studio, old, in his with his boots on, it was really ok. Rita said she had nothing left to do. House was empty. Life was empty. She had been ill for a few years. I think she quit fighting and died 11 weeks later. Not very long, a few months died, it was designated as a state Historic Site and the state purchased the home with all of their possessions. City, missouri is known as the city of fountains in theer 200 registered metropolitan area. It could just as easily be known as the city of all of ours. Right now, the park and boulevard district. Todays park and boulevard system is about 160 miles. 12,000 acres in about 10 square miles in kansas city. Addition we have 220 parks throughout the city. 200,000 acresr down to Neighborhood Parks that are less than an acre. And they are all different, obviously. Larger parks are more what i would consider to be a community or regional park. Back in the 1880s, 1890 timeframe, this was more like a town. Estern a lot of small structures like shanties, shacks, things like that, there was not a lot of good zoning, planning and associated with that. There were urban development concerns. All of these things. We did not really have a modern series. A modern city. And as they try to become a city with more modern developments, of course the leadership of the city made that happen. The name George Kessler comes up in conversation. He was the original Landscape Architect of the city. , actuallyrmany entered the kansas missouri missouri area when he was 18 years old. 1862 is when he was born. When he was about 22. He worked on a railroad car back in shawnee, kansas, and he came back to the kansas city side. There were other leaders of the community. A lot of his early training in european cities a lot of the great parks systems, europe, the result a high level of appreciation, what good Landscape Design is all about. This is also part of the City Beautiful Movement. Back to a point in time when there are were a lot of shanties in the city. Movementity beautiful came about when people realize they wanted to live in Better Living conditions. Involved, they got with transportation systems. Bridges. Drinking water. All of this was the importance of growing a great city. It was a beautiful place to be. People were outside a lot. Theid not have airconditioning we have today. They spent time at outside. They wanted grass. They wanted trees. The City Beautiful Movement was about appearance and aesthetics, and at the same time they wanted to be outside in the outdoors. A lot of major parks were developed through condemnation, and then we have a Sub Development where a city developed a plan to dedicate so much land to parkland. So, its not uncommon any given so if you get up to 12,000 acres, over many, many years, it takes place. As the systems get older and older, they require more and more maintenance. They have a lot of planning. Built and these trees have life expectancies. And then they maintain the turf. The biggest challenge today is maintenance. I think generally, we strongly believe the boulevard system we would encourage anyone to appreciate it, but it does not take a lot to realize what we have here. You live here. You do not take it for granted. Our cities tour staff visited kansas city, missouri to learn more about his rich history. Learn more about kansas city and other stuffs of our cities tour at www. Cspan. Org citiestour. Youre watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. Q a, Hoover Institution senior fellow john cogan on entitlement programs. Entitlement programs stem from a basic desire to help someone in need of assistance. For politicians is a little zero, of course. Its somebody elses money. But they still have that same desire that you and i do. Bey also have the desire to reelected. Place, then put in the game is changed. Money starts flowing to politicians to protect those benefits and the game changes. John cogan on u. S. Federal entitlements. On cspan. On reel america, dreams of equality of about the Womens Rights Convention held in seneca falls, new york. Heres a preview. [applause] Elizabeth Cady stanton. [applause] the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having the object of the establishment of tyranny over her. He has never permitted her her nobleeal bowl her in a inalienable right to the franchise. He has withheld from her this is election day and my brother is 26 years old. His best sunday clothes. He drove off with father and the hired man to vote. I love, dont you and the country as well as he. Course, but dont you go ahead and say so because then we would be called strongminded. He has taken her rights and. Roperty i have learned me enough to school me a while. I must, like a dutiful girl, place the money in fathers hands, and there goes all of my hard earnings. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to provide a beatty and to her husband. Was the entire film on reel america, sunday at 4 p. M. Eastern only on cspan3. Up next from the 34th annual Winston Churchill conference historian kevin ruane discusses , Winston Churchill and the development and use of nuclear weapons. He is the author of churchill and the bomb in war and cold war. This event from new york city is about 45 minutes. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back. And to introduce our next speaker, we have a very special lady
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