Fannie Hurst. [New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, TH-22169]

Fannie Hurst, the daughter of Rose Koppel and Samuel Hurst, was born at the home of her…

Francis White Cloud. Portrait by George Catlin, circa 1844–1845. [Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art]

The Ioways did not live in what is now Missouri for much of the historical era.…

Lonnie Johnson performing in 1965 at the Folk Festival Show, Palisades Amusement Park, New Jersey. [Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Amsterdam News Photograph Archive, #8084]

Alonzo “Lonnie” Johnson was an extraordinarily gifted blues guitarist and talented singer…

Jolly Mill circa 2022. [Photo by Ross Brown]

Jolly Mill, a grist mill and whiskey distillery, was built in the late 1840s on…

Joseph James Jones, circa 1937. [Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Forbes Watson Papers, 1840–1967, 2976]

The biography of Joseph James Jones is both the story of the life of an American artist and…

Scott Joplin. [New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, 1692841]

Known during his lifetime as the “King of Ragtime Writers,” Scott Joplin was an African…

William T. Kemper in 1902. [Political History of Jackson County: Biographical Sketches of the Men Who Have Helped to Make It (1902)]

Progenitor of two of Missouri’s most prominent banking families, William T. Kemper also…

Emma R. Knell, circa 1926. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Knell Family Photographs Collection, P0708-015517]

Emma R. Knell, a businesswoman and politician, was born in Moline, Illinois, on October 21…

Kathryn J. Kuhlman. [Courtesy of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives]

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman, born in Concordia, Missouri, on May 9, 1907, became…

The Figure 8 roller coaster at Lakeside Park, added in 1907, was a “huge reversing spiral” in which cars rushed down a half-mile curving track with “three figure eights in a descent of 50 feet.” [Courtesy of the Joplin Historical & Mineral Museum]

 “Once the most important and popular play place of the Tri-State district,” Lakeside Park…