How "southern" is Kansas City? (St. Louis, Columbia: moving, manufacturing)

[mo guy]

Kansas City is very southern --- especially since it was in open rebellion against the Union during the Civil War --- back in 1860 Westport was the important economic hub ---with KC just being the steamboat landing for Westport --- KC didn't begin to develop until it filled up with displaced residents from the five Secessionist counties that that Union Army emptied out and left the whole western part of Missouri a smoking ruin.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by mo guy

Kansas City is very southern --- especially since it was in open rebellion against the Union during the Civil War --- back in 1860 Westport was the important economic hub ---with KC just being the steamboat landing for Westport --- KC didn't begin to develop until it filled up with displaced residents from the five Secessionist counties that that Union Army emptied out and left the whole western part of Missouri a smoking ruin.

Full of Confederate sympathizers? Yes.

Culturally Southern? You've got to be kidding.

Missouri had two state governments for a while, one pro-Union, the other pro-Confederate, and there's even a Union Cemetery in Kansas City. The state and the city had legal segregation, but neither ever moved to disenfranchise its black citizens post-war, nor can I think of any Missouri politician who got elected sounding like George Wallace or Ross Barnett. Its flagship state university quietly admitted its first black student in 1950, four years before Brown, and no one "stood in the schoolhouse door" to block his registration.

You don't really enter the South until you're about 50 to 100 miles southeast of the city. Kansas City's about as Southern as Baltimore.

[mo guy]

You never saw Confederate Armies operating in the Eastern part of Missouri---because St Louis was the GREAT UNION STRONGHOLD of the West --- St Louis was the home town of both Generals Grant and Sherman -- a huge manufacturing War Machine that helped outfit the Union army and navy ---which defeated the Confederacy,

The kind of Southerners that lived in the KC --western part of the state ---were as rabid secessionist SLAVE HOLDING PROMOTING ---TRAITORS ---- as the ones in south Carolina and Mississippi ---in fact the Souths last stand was in 1864 at the Battle of Wesport --the largest battle west of the Mississippi ----just one of the facts that contribute to the complicated place Missouri is ---


So without any doubt ---master-planned Kansas City ---is certainly a more southern city---than say St Louis ---even though both cities were in a slave state --- actually St Louis was the largest city in a slave state

[mo guy]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Full of Confederate sympathizers? Yes.

Culturally Southern? You've got to be kidding.

Missouri had two state governments for a while, one pro-Union, the other pro-Confederate, and there's even a Union Cemetery in Kansas City. The state and the city had legal segregation, but neither ever moved to disenfranchise its black citizens post-war, nor can I think of any Missouri politician who got elected sounding like George Wallace or Ross Barnett. Its flagship state university quietly admitted its first black student in 1950, four years before Brown, and no one "stood in the schoolhouse door" to block his registration.

You don't really enter the South until you're about 50 to 100 miles southeast of the city. Kansas City's about as Southern as Baltimore.

European and Catholic ---St Louis is more like Baltimore

KC is more like the modern southern cities --- NEW ---but still southern at its core

[Weaubleau]

Kansas City seems less southern than Indianapolis or even Cincinnati. Whatever happened in 1850 is a long time ago and many many people have come and gone from KC since then. KC does have barbecue and a jazz influence historically, but then so does St. Louis. KC never sustained the migration from Appalachia that Indianapolis and Cincinnati did which gives those cities more of a southern air than KC. Most of the people I have met who have roots from around here have roots in rural Kansas or Missouri, not the Ozarks or the deep south. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate KC's southernness around a 2 to 3.

[mo guy]

My last point --- there wouldn't be a thread "Is Kansas City a Southern City" ---if there were not enough people saying that - to make it a controversial fact---just say'n

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Full of Confederate sympathizers? Yes.

Culturally Southern? You've got to be kidding.

Missouri had two state governments for a while, one pro-Union, the other pro-Confederate, and there's even a Union Cemetery in Kansas City. The state and the city had legal segregation, but neither ever moved to disenfranchise its black citizens post-war, nor can I think of any Missouri politician who got elected sounding like George Wallace or Ross Barnett. Its flagship state university quietly admitted its first black student in 1950, four years before Brown, and no one "stood in the schoolhouse door" to block his registration.

You don't really enter the South until you're about 50 to 100 miles southeast of the city. Kansas City's about as Southern as Baltimore.

Seriously, the south side of Chicago is more culturally southern than KC is.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by mo guy

My last point --- there wouldn't be a thread "Is Kansas City a Southern City" ---if there were not enough people saying that - to make it a controversial fact---just say'n

But for the same reasons, we have conversations over whether Missouri is a Southern state.

I remember seeing an article back in my college days where some staffer on the campus newspaper put Missouri in the South.

Mizzou bolting the Big 12 for the SEC didn't help matters any either.

IMO, the only truly Southern parts of Missouri begin at the Lake of the Ozarks and spread south and east from there. The Bootheel is the most Southern part of the state.

The reason I chose Baltimore for my Kansas-City-isn't-really-Southern comparison is because its state, Maryland, was split in two by the war like Missouri was; the words to its state song are a rallying cry for Confederate sympathizers after Union troops occupied Baltimore (which is why they're not sung much) and the city doesn't have the sleepiness of many Southern cities - like St. Louis (which I agree Baltimore resembles more), it's an old industrial center (the South has only one of these, Birmingham) and seaport.

And while KC's close enough to "Greater Appalachia" to have whiffs of its culture waft through it, St. Louis is surrounded by it - and even though it was the center of Union support in the Show-Me State (and yes, the major Civil War battles in Missouri took place around (and in present-day) Kansas City, it's felt more "Southern" to me than KC did, and does.

And we're both native Missourians - I just happen to live in Pennsylvania* now. So the argument, I guess, will continue, and never quite be settled conclusively.

*And while I'm confusing things for everyone, the University of Pennsylvania trained most of the South's doctors before the war, and not everyone in Philadelphia was on board with either the abolition of slavery - a historical marker in front of the studios of the city's public broadcasting station marks the site of an abolitionist meeting hall that was destroyed one week after it opened in the 1840s by anti-abolitionist rioters. But Philadelphia is most assuredly not a Southern city, even though the Mason-Dixon Line lies a half-hour south of it.

[mo guy]

Yes -- Missouri is a southern state


Philadelphia ---was the second largest English speaking city after London in 1776 --- it was never in a slave state ---
St Louis and KC both are --- St Louis may have a connection to the south because of the river --- but KC has a connection to the worst part of the slave holding aggression --- that would cause the Civil War to start in Kansas 5 years before Fort Sumter was fired on --plus the Wild West of Jesse James --was the result of the Union Army's foot on the collective necks of the defeated Confederates ---which was the majority of the population of not only Jackson county ---but all of western Missouri


That you say KC is not so southern now --- well I guess that can be -- relates to the success of the Union to rehabilitate (Reconstruction) the bushwhackers that fought until everything was laid waste ---just like 20th century western allies did to rebuild defeated Nazi Germany and Japan --- I guess Lincoln did a good job --- but I would say that Out state Missouri --is really an embarrassment --- Out State METHsouri unfortunately makes this state --- North Mississippi

[James Bond 007]

I'd say KC is 1/2 Midwest, 1/4 West and 1/4 Southern.