the State Historical Society of Missouri
![Inez Parker Griggs. [St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 28, 1907]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2025-01/1.-inez-parker-griggs.jpg?h=263c755c&itok=wVwreUOa "Inez Parker Griggs. [St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 28, 1907]")
Inez Parker Griggs was a poet who lived in Rolla, Missouri. The daughter of formerly enslaved individuals,…
![W. C. Handy playing at the fifth annual American Negro Music Festival in St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park in 1944. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur Witman 120mm Photograph Collection (S0732), 732.31462]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2020-06/Handy-at-Sportsman%27s-Park.jpg?h=3922e451&itok=pT3BzbVU "W. C. Handy playing at the fifth annual American Negro Music Festival in St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park in 1944. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur Witman 120mm Photograph Collection (S0732), 732.31462]")
Although William Christopher Handy spent relatively little of his long life in Missouri,…
![Jessie Housley. [Your St. Louis and Mine, 1937]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2025-03/1.-jessie-housley.jpg?h=a66815ff&itok=k5kgpxeq "Jessie Housley. [Your St. Louis and Mine, 1937]")
Jessie Housley was a successful Missouri artist and educator in the mid-twentieth century. She…
![Fannie Hurst. [New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, TH-22169]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Fannie_Hurst.jpg?h=bd99ae02&itok=_VJZe3C7 "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 maternal grandparents…
![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]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Alonzo_Johnson.jpg?h=28015916&itok=kGea3NPZ "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 who pioneered a…
![Joseph James Jones, circa 1937. [Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Forbes Watson Papers, 1840–1967, 2976]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Joseph_Jones.jpg?h=41bf56ee&itok=KEJRPQoc "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]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Scott_Joplin.jpg?h=edbf73d2&itok=TOkAbMii "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…
![Fran Landesman at the Crystal Palace, 1961. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Thelma Blumberg Collection, S0402]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-09/1.-fran-landesman.jpg?h=743325c3&itok=C1Xi1lIz "Fran Landesman at the Crystal Palace, 1961. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Thelma Blumberg Collection, S0402]")
Fran Landesman launched her career as a jazz lyricist in St. Louis in the 1950s. A native New Yorker, she was…
![Theodore Link, circa 1890. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N27617]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Theodore_Carl_Link.jpg?h=1ec86aa2&itok=7WFB8PCo "Theodore Link, circa 1890. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N27617]")
Theodore Carl Link is best known as the architect of St. Louis’s Union Station, but if he…
![Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mary Kathy Dains Photograph Collection, P0300]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-09/1-Mary_Elizabeth_Mahnkey.jpg?h=fdc48845&itok=wxfN7XjG "Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mary Kathy Dains Photograph Collection, P0300]")
Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey was a lifelong newspaper and magazine journalist, and a regional poet. Born in Boone…