Kansas City boasts a rich history, deeply influenced by African American contributions, particularly in the realm of barbecue. This article delves into how Black food traditions shaped the city's culinary landscape and fostered Black-owned businesses.
Kansas City-style barbecue ribs.
The Hannibal Bridge and the Rise of Kansas City
When the Hannibal Bridge opened in 1869, Kansas City was strategically positioned as the link between western livestock breeders and eastern markets. The opening of the bridge was celebrated with a barbecue.
The Kansas City Livestock Co. was established in 1871 to capitalize on the booming stockyards and meatpacking industries. By 1950, over 4 million heads of livestock were being moved through KC every year. Meatpackers and butchers often had less desirable parts, providing a source of cheap product to anyone willing to make use of them.
Kansas City Barbecue: A Brief History
Kansas City Barbecue: A Brief History
There are even stories of early pitmasters raiding the garbage outside the packing plants and butchers for discarded cuts.
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The Great Migration and Culinary Evolution
The Great Migration, the massive population shift of African Americans out of the South and into northern and Midwestern cities in the early 20th century, helped accelerate Kansas City’s culinary evolution. These new Black folks moving to the area came seeking work and business opportunities, and in the process, created KC’s signature style of barbecue.
Map illustrating the Great Migration of African Americans in the United States.
The relationship between the Great Migration and the development of Kansas City barbecue is perfectly encapsulated in the story of King Henry Perry.
King Henry Perry: The Barbecue King of Kansas City
Born in Tennessee in 1875, Perry worked as a cook aboard Mississippi River steamships, where he began to develop his craft. He rambled about the Midwest, spending time in Chicago and Minneapolis before arriving in Kansas City in 1907. First working as a porter in a Quality Hill saloon, it wasn’t long before Perry had taken to selling barbecue from a stand in the city’s Garment District.
By 1911, Perry had relocated to a tent at 18th and Vine streets, where he tended a brick-lined pit dug into the ground and already called himself the Barbecue King. Despite staying close to the heart of Kansas City’s vibrant Black community, he developed a following that crossed racial barriers.
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In 1932, a reporter for The Kansas City Call wrote, “With a trade about equally divided between white and black, Mr. Perry serves both high and low. Swanky limousines, gleaming with nickel and glossy black, rub shoulders at the curb outside the Perry stand with pre-historic Model T Fords.”
In a 1917 letter printed in The Topeka Plaindealer, a well-traveled and hungry fan wrote to Perry, “Dear Sir - received by parcel post just before leaving Chicago a package of your delicious meats. … I am enclosing money order here for three dollars. Please deduct postage and send me the rest in ribs, and you may put in some mutton. Send this parcel post to Clarence R. Brown, 165 Broadway, New York City … Please send this out at once, as I want to introduce your ribs to Broadway.”
In 1920, to thank the community for his success, Perry hosted a free barbecue, at which he is said to have served up 1,000 free meals. In recognition of his generous act, Kansas City marked July 3, 2020, as Henry Perry Day on the cookout’s centennial.
The Perry Method
As business prospered, Perry hired help. Notably two brothers from Texas. When Arthur Bryant arrived in 1931, his older brother Charlie was already established in Kansas City and learning the barbecue trade under Perry. Like so many other Black, Southern transplants, the Bryants moved north to escape the poverty of their rural upbringing. He stayed, and Perry hired him and Charlie.
Another Perry disciple was a man named Arthur Pinkard. Through Pinkard, the Perry tradition was passed on to the Gates family, and Ol’ Kentuck eventually became Gates Bar-B-Q. Today, a photograph of Pinkard can be found in all Gates locations.
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Henry Perry died in 1940 at age 66. Perry left the business to his protégé, Charlie Bryant. Then, it was time for Arthur to make some changes.
Kansas City Style Evolves
Arthur Bryant did not conceive of tomato-based barbecue sauce. In addition to the usual vinegar and spices, a recipe published in The Star in 1927 calls for one can of tomatoes, one small bottle of ketchup and a can of Spanish tomato sauce. He cut the cayenne pepper and made it sweet, “a pleasure,” as he was fond of saying. Years later, tomatoes were added to the recipe.
The sauce served up at the renamed Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue became legendary and transformed Kansas City barbecue into what we know it as today.
He also improved the dine-in experience for his customers-a bit. About the restrained redecoration, Bryant said, “That’s just not barbecue, not when you got them plush seats … you can’t get too fancy or you get away from what the place is all about.”
Because many early Black barbecue entrepreneurs operated wherever they could, often merely digging a pit and pitching a tent in a vacant lot or setting up in rundown buildings where the rent was cheap, the grease house atmosphere became synonymous with the authenticity of barbecue restaurants.
The Gates family took a different approach. Realizing that modern fast-food chains were his main competitors, he elevated the standards for every aspect of the business. Recipes were perfected to ensure consistency, his staff wore neat uniforms, the business was marketed in a way that no barbecue joint had been before, and Ollie insisted on clean and modern dining areas for his customers.
Word Spreads
While, again, the author Trillin did a lot to sell the world on Kansas City barbecue, others were also spreading the gospel.
In 1923, Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium, then called Muehlebach Field, was built at 22nd and Brooklyn streets, just a few blocks from the city’s hotbed of Black-owned barbecue restaurants around the 18th and Vine neighborhood.
Radio broadcasters, newspaper reporters and visiting teams couldn’t help but notice the smell of the barbecue smoke drifting into the stadium. The aroma was frequently mentioned over the air and included in writeups of the games. Of course, the out-of-towners invariably made the short walk over to the barbecue restaurants nearby. Kansas City’s place on the barbecue map was broadcast over radio frequencies and by newspaper presses across the Midwest.
Long Live the King
Since 1972, the sports-barbecue connection has continued in the parking lot of the current home of the Royals and of the Chiefs, the Truman Sports Complex. Each fall when the Chiefs play at Arrowhead Stadium, thousands of tailgaters fill the air with enough smoke to keep game announcers singing the praises of Kansas City barbecue and to pay homage to the King.
Towering figures like the Bryant brothers, Arthur Pinkard and the Gates family are not alone in their debt to the original KC barbecue king, Henry Perry. He left his mark on many of the city’s early barbecue restaurants and cooks. Through the many pitmasters out there-professional and novice alike-Perry’s tradition lives on. And because so many barbecue joints welcomed jazz musicians to entertain their clientele, the signature food tradition also helped the growth of Kansas City’s signature music scene too.
Several factors combine to make Kansas City the barbecue capital that it is-the availability of hardwoods used in the pits, the rise of the meatpacking industry, a signature sauce, vocal promoters.
The City Market: A Taste of Kansas City
Say "taste of Kansas City" and most folks think steaks and barbecue. But to get the full flavor of the area's ethnic and historical heritage, the city Market is a must-see on any itinerary. Tucked inside a larger area known as the River Market, the City Market is an expansive outdoor marketplace located north of Downtown at fifth & Walnut, just off the banks of the Missouri river.
This renovated historic area was essentially the seed from which Kansas City - originally know as the Town of Kansas - got its start. Pioneers in the mid-1800s began their overland journeys westward from this jumping off point. The City Market is home to one of the most unusual museums aroung. THE ARABIA STEAMBOAT MUSEUM houses the recovered cargo of the "Great White Arabia," which sank in the river more than 140 years ago.
Originally built in 1939 and renovated again in 1990, buildings in the City Market offer enough shopping and dining opportunities - galleries, boutiques, ethnic shops, unique restaurants - to stave off even hard-core cases of hunger and boredom. No stale, chain-store feel here - shopping this area means strolling among open-air markets.
Just about anything can be found at the shops in the City Market. Whether searching for souvenirs from here or abroad or spices to scent the kitchen, one will not go home empty-handed.
Open Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday is the City Market's open-air, year-round (weather permitting) FARMER'S MARKET, the largest of any in six states with home-grown produce, herbs, plants, and baked goods galore. Farmers with permanent reservations occupy all 144 of the market's island stalls. Fortunately, there's plenty of shade and admission is free.
When all the shopping makes you hungry, let your taste buds be your guide. Try Vietnamese fare at Hein Vuong Restaurant, and stop by Hung Vuong Mart to buy the ingredients to recreate the meal at home. Or sample the Italian menu at CASCONE'S. BARBECUE offers barbecue and blues.
Early History of Kansas City
Before the arrival of European explorers, the area was inhabited at various times by peoples of the Hopewell tradition and later the Mississippian culture, as well as the Kansa, Osage, Otoe and Missouri tribes. In the early 18th century, Frenchmen from St. Louis, Missouri moved up the Missouri River to trap for furs and trade with the local Native Americans.
The area was acquired by the United States from France in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and Americans began settling there in greater numbers after the organization of the Missouri Territory in 1812. In 1838, Kansas City was founded and eventually surpassed neighboring Westport to become the predominant city west of St. Louis. The area was also a focal point in the westward expansion of the United States, as both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails ran nearby.
The first documented French visitor to the Kansas City area was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. In these documents, he described the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, as the first to refer to them by those names.
Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition left St. Louis on a mission to reach the Pacific Ocean. In 1804, Lewis and Clark camped for three days at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. During their stay there, they met French fur traders and mapped the area of Quality Hill in what would eventually become Kansas City, Missouri, calling it "a fine place for a fort".
As part of the Missouri Compromise in 1821, Congress admitted Missouri to the union as the 24th state and as a slave state. The area of the confluence of the two rivers, alternately known as the village of Kansa, Chouteau's, Quindaro, Westport Landing, Missouri River Quay, Town of Kansas, City of Kansas, and finally Kansas City, has been subject to several floods and river course changes.
In 1821, 24-year-old François Gesseau Chouteau, nephew of René Auguste Chouteau, set up a permanent trading post in the great bend in the Missouri River that makes up the Northeast Industrial District. He referred to the post as "the village of the Kansa".
Over the next years, the character of Kansas City was defined by those who wanted to live close to the river (who were referred to as "Rabbits") and those who wanted to live in the hills (the "Goats"). John Calvin McCoy, who is considered the "father of Kansas City", had a hand in establishing settlements in both locations.
In 1838, McCoy, Chouteau, and other merchants formed the Town of Kansas Company and purchased Prudhomme's 271-acre farm. The investors had rejected other names for the new town including Port Fonda, Rabbitville, and Possum Trot.
Throughout the 1840s, the population and importance of Kansas swelled as it and nearby Independence and Westport became starting points on the Oregon, Santa Fe, and California trails for settlers heading west.
Jackson County formally incorporated the town of Kansas, Missouri on June 3, 1850, traditionally viewed as the retrospective founding date for what became Kansas City. On March 28, 1853, Missouri officially incorporated it, renaming it the City of Kansas.
At the time of the City of Kansas's incorporation, Missouri was still a slave state. However, the population was deeply divided over the issue of slavery. As a result of the new potential for slavery in Kansas, pro-slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring slave state of Missouri.
Missouri stayed in the Union during the Civil War. However, since the city's first settlers had arrived via the Missouri River from the South, considerable tension existed there between pro-Union and pro-Confederate sympathizers. Thus, the City of Kansas and its immediate environs became the focus of intense military activity.
In 1864, Price invaded Missouri in a last-gasp Confederate offensive called Price's Raid. He pushed Union troops out of Independence in the Second Battle of Independence and into the City of Kansas, resulting in the pivotal Battle of Westport in October of that year near Brush Creek.
In 1865, the Missouri Pacific railroad reached Kansas City. The Hannibal Bridge, designed by Octave Chanute, opened in 1869. In 1889, with a population of around 130,000, the city adopted a new charter and changed its name to Kansas City. In 1897, Kansas City annexed Westport.
The initial meeting of tracks occurred in the West Bottoms an area that had previously been used to outfit travellers on the Oregon and Santa Fe trails who had followed the Kansas River. Its facilities were to become the Kansas City Stockyards. The city has since been the second to Chicago as busiest train center in the country.
In 1871, the Kansas City Stockyards boomed in the West Bottoms because of their central location in the country and their proximity to trains. They became second only to Chicago's in size, and the city itself was identified with its famous Kansas City steak.
The Pendergast Era
The Pendergast era, under Democrat big city bosses James and Tom Pendergast from 1890 to 1940, ushered in a colorful and influential era for the city. The Pendergasts presided over an era in which many outsized personalities shaped the city and contributed to the whole country.
During this period, the Pendergasts ensured that national prohibition was meaningless in Kansas City; the Kansas City boulevard and park system was developed; the Country Club Plaza, Country Club District, and Ward Parkway were created; TWA made Kansas City the hub of national aviation; most of the downtown Kansas City buildings were built; its inner city culture blossomed with contributions to Negro league baseball, Kansas City jazz music, and Kansas City-style barbecue cuisine; the stockyards and train station were second only to Chicago; and Harry S Truman, from nearby Independence, became President.
