How "southern" is Kansas City? (Memphis, Queen City: storage, oil)

[KC_Retiree]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Good points all, and you know I agree with your last sentence.

Kansas City barbecue would not have become the phenomenon it is had this African-American fellow named Henry Perry not moved there from Memphis in 1921 and set up a barbecue stand there. Both of KC's best-known (but no longer best) Q joints trace their origins to Perry's stand, and KC and Memphis Q are kissing cousins. What KC supplied was the raw materials.

Yeah, Missouri and both of its big cities are definitely Midwestern. But it's still complicated.

*Interesting (at least to me) factoid: Bottles and cans of Budweiser beer used to indicate which Anheuser-Busch brewery produced them: "Brewed by Anheuser-Busch, Inc., of St. Louis, Mo., at [in the places where I've lived since leaving Missouri: Merrimack, N.H. | Newark, N.J. - I forget how many breweries A-B operates; the one in Williamsburg, Va., is very well known because of the theme park A-B built next to it]. The company stopped the practice once Bud drinkers outside the Midwest started paying a premium for Budweiser brewed "at St. Louis, Mo." - on the grounds that "Gussie Busch drinks the stuff himself." I did go on the A-B brewery tour one Christmas season when I visited Mom when she lived in that gated community on the St. Louis-University City line just north of the Washington University campus; it ends with free samples of Bud - and I thought that the Bud brewed there did taste better than what I could get in Philadelphia.

I would not use Henry Perry as an argument to boost KC's southern history. African-Americans migrated to every major northern city after the civil war to escape persistent racial discrimination/persecution in the south. In that sense, they brought nothing that is distinctively more southern to KC than to Toledo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Detroit, Chicago etc... as they all were destinations in the migration. In any event, the "south" that they did bring with them was also very different than southern culture we are discussing here (to say the least).

KC does also have a baptist heritage which is why William Jewell is where it is. There's no doubt that in the 1860's and 1870's, there were still potentially a majority of people in western Missouri that had southern roots. But the critical point is that the population in those years was still very small, just a few thousand people. But that changed pretty quickly as the railroad brought commerce to KC and the city really took off growing and that growth was from the east and midwest (and especially immigrants) and the growing population quickly overwhelmed the civil war era population. At that point, KC ceased to be southern in any way. Before the civil war, Native Americans lived in the Kansas City region but that doesn't make the city culturally Native American. While I agree with the statement that KC is definitely midwestern I really don't think it's all that complicated: Brief periods of settlement may impact the heritage of Kansas City but they do not necessarily have any impact on the present day culture. That's true for almost any place in the world (is London culturally Italian because the Romans were there for a brief period of history?).

[Weaubleau]

Good Point, KC Retiree. KC was a recipient of a great deal of Irish immigration, along with such notably "southern" cities as Boston, New York and Chicago. I mean we have two big Irish celebrations every year, and the third biggest St Patrick's day parade in the country. How big is St. Patrick's day in the south? Probably somewhere on the lines of, people wear green to the office and forget about it by noon. Something tells me that Birmingham and Atlanta don't shut down one of their main drags for 5 hours to have a St. Patrick's day parade like KC does.

[lovekcmo]

Kansas City is as southern as Omaha or Des Moines. St Louis is geographically southern like Memphis. Mississippi Delta country.

[Bluefox]

I think it’s a city that the average southerner could adjust quite well to, even if it’s not “southern” itself.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Bluefox

I think it’s a city that the average southerner could adjust quite well to, even if it’s not “southern” itself.

I would agree with that, but the somewhat "colder" climate prevents some of the influx. The Midwest is part of the north by default, therefore most areas are far less southern influenced than KC which is on the far southwest periphery of the region.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

I would agree with that, but the somewhat "colder" climate prevents some of the influx. The Midwest is part of the north by default, therefore most areas are far less southern influenced than KC which is on the far southwest periphery of the region.

Wait, what?

Kansas' southwest corner is some 700 miles southwest of KC, and the Arkansas line is about 250 miles to the south.

It's in the southwest quadrant of the region, sure, but hardly the "far southwest periphery".

And it's fairly close to the center of the "agricultural Midwest" - the part west of the Mississippi. The only city anywhere near as large that's closer is Omaha.

[eddie gein]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Wait, what?

Kansas' southwest corner is some 700 miles southwest of KC, and the Arkansas line is about 250 miles to the south.

It's in the southwest quadrant of the region, sure, but hardly the "far southwest periphery".

And it's fairly close to the center of the "agricultural Midwest" - the part west of the Mississippi. The only city anywhere near as large that's closer is Omaha.

In posts on other threads Granite Stater has stated that he believes southern Kansas still has a lot of elements of the south and I don't think anybody disputes that southern Missouri does. In that model of thought KC would be in the southwest "periphery of the Midwest".

IMO I would extend the "periphery" of the midwest to Wichita unless you were considering the Great Plains a distinct region.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Wait, what?

Kansas' southwest corner is some 700 miles southwest of KC, and the Arkansas line is about 250 miles to the south.

It's in the southwest quadrant of the region, sure, but hardly the "far southwest periphery".

And it's fairly close to the center of the "agricultural Midwest" - the part west of the Mississippi. The only city anywhere near as large that's closer is Omaha.

State lines are arbitrary lines drawn in the sand. Southwest Kansas has nothing in common with the Midwest, but far more in common with the rest of the interior western US and adjacent southwest. Areas of Southeast Kansas are peripheral, certainly far from solidly Midwest by any stretch. The agricultural core of the Midwest is primarily delineated by areas that grow corn and soybeans. Only far NE Kansas is solidly in the Corn Belt. Wichita is hard to categorize, as many from the South always tend to put in the "solidly Midwest" category in the current day, whereas, many from the North state that it doesn't really have as much in common with the majority of the actual Midwest.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

State lines are arbitrary lines drawn in the sand. Southwest Kansas has nothing in common with the Midwest, but far more in common with the rest of the interior western US and adjacent southwest. Areas of Southeast Kansas are peripheral, certainly far from solidly Midwest by any stretch. The agricultural core of the Midwest is primarily delineated by areas that grow corn and soybeans. Only far NE Kansas is solidly in the Corn Belt. Wichita is hard to categorize, as many from the South always tend to put in the "solidly Midwest" category in the current day, whereas, many from the North state that it doesn't really have as much in common with the majority of the actual Midwest.

You're leaving out the wheat-growing region, which certainly doesn't belong in the Mountain West or any part of the South. The Great Plains is definitely part of the Midwest, and Kansas City sits on its eastern edge.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

You're leaving out the wheat-growing region, which certainly doesn't belong in the Mountain West or any part of the South. The Great Plains is definitely part of the Midwest, and Kansas City sits on its eastern edge.

The solid line between the East and the West is generally agreed upon by many geographers as State highway 183 or 281 that traverse north-south across the region. The wheat growing areas are much more aligned to the interior West in terms of very low population densities (defined by the Census Bureau as frontier counties), and climate (more of a semi-arid steppe variety) that have little in common with areas to the east- which is the vast majority of the Midwest. I also don't consider the western Dakotas or western Nebraska to be grouped with the Midwest either, they have far more in common with the western US in many categories.