Interview with Adolf Ridgway. Ridgway, born in 1890, discusses his family and early life in Arkansas, dropping out of school at the age of 6 to help his mother, picking cotton, coming to Kansas City in his late 1920s to work on the Santa Fe Railroad, and his memories of the two world wars and the Great Depression. He also shares his thoughts about past American presidents, the boxer Jack Johnson, leisure time activities, and working at other jobs, including North American Aviation.
Interview with Argentine resident Roberto Marin about his life, work, and family. Marin recalls family members immigrating from Mexico to Kansas City, Kansas, to escape the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican "El Campo" area adjacent to the Santa Fe railroad facilities in Kansas City, working in hardware stores, his move to the United States in 1955, and working as a bus boy at the Muehlebach Hotel upon his arrival in Kansas City. He discusses working for the railroad and Swift packing house, working in and owning restaurants for 33 years, and the people, events, and organizations he was involved in that preserved and celebrated Mexican culture in the Kansas City area. He also shares stories about other Mexican immigrants to Kansas City, attending the inauguration of Mexican President Portillo and other ongoing involvement in Mexican politics, and about the sister cities program.
Series of interviews with Kansas City, Kansas residents of Mexican descent about their family backgrounds and early history in the area. Topics discussed include life in Mexico, immigration, the Mexican Revolution, working beet harvests and at meatpacking and railroad jobs in the United States, and life in the Kansas City area, including food, housing, and family life.
Interview with Carmen Rangel about her life and the history of her family in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. She recounts her parents' early life in Leon, Mexico, their immigration to Kansas City by way of Newton, Kansas, and her own early life in Argentine where she attended St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Divine schools. She discusses the social life of the area, including church fiestas, neighbors on 24th and 25th Streets, local businesses along Strong Avenue and facing anti-Mexican discrimination. She also shares memories of her brother's service in World War II and the impact of the1951 flood on her family.
Series of interviews with Kansas City, Kansas residents of Mexican descent about daily life and the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods of Kansas City in Missouri and Kansas. Topics discussed include railroad, ice house, and packinghouse jobs, family life, cooking, community events and fiestas, Mexican-American baseball teams, small businesses, and encountering segregation and discrimination. Interview subjects also share stories about service in World War II, tension between speaking English and Spanish, and playing in local bands and orchestras.
Interview with Curtis Smith about working for the Union Pacific Railroad with his father in the Fairfax area of Kansas City, Kansas, and getting to know African American coworkers who lived in the Quindaro area. He discusses segregation and the economic decline in the area, and recalls the men he says were the first African American employees at the railroad company, and mentioned Geraldine Gray, who he says was an early African American woman in the company, and discusses the racial and sex-based discrimination she and the men faced. He also discusses his railroad work and employee culture at the Quindaro yard office, and later becoming an instructor at Kansas City Kansas Community College, coordinating the Wyandotte County Ethnic Festival, and taking students to tour the Quindaro town site, and discusses area Civil War-era history.
Interview with Kansas City school board member John Rodriguez about his life in Dodge City, Kansas, and later Kansas City, Missouri. Born in 1941, he recalls growing up in a predominantly Mexican area of Dodge City where his father worked in packing houses and for the railroads, educational discrimination faced by Mexican-American students, being unable to get haircuts in Dodge City barbershops, and enlisting in the army. He also discusses visiting Kansas City and being able to see Mexican movies, attend fiestas, and buy Mexican groceries and, while discrimination existed, having access to Mexican barbers and public swimming pools. After studying Spanish and French in college, he began his teaching career in Kansas towns including Elkhart and Hutchinson, and came to Kansas City as Director of Outreach Programs for University of Missouri-Kansas City. He later worked in roles furthering educational opportunity and was elected to the Kansas City School Board in 1975.
Interview with Bill Wehmeyer about growing up in the Quindaro area. He was born in 1928 and recalls playing among the ruins of the original Quindaro town site, the daily life of his family, and describes the city limits of Kansas City, Kansas, expanding to include the area. He also discusses his experiences as a student; working for Katz drugstores and the General Motors plant; later moving to rural Missouri and to Waco, Texas, where he worked as a pastor and chaplain; and recalls segregation and discrimination within the community.
Interview with Lucy Lopez about her life and work as a preschool teacher and with the Dos Mundos newspaper. She recalls growing up in the Armourdale neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, where her parents worked for the railroad and packinghouses. She shares memories of the 1951 flood, including the family moving in with relatives in the Westside where the family ultimately remained. She also recounts working at the Muehlebach Hotel's Terrace Grill where she met many celebrities, her school experience, encountering discrimination when seeking employment, and giving birth to two of her children while living in Chicago; and discusses motherhood, and her work and further schooling in early childhood education, the establishment of Dos Mundos bilingual newspaper, and her own experience maintaining fluency in Spanish and English.
Part one of a two-part interview with Ramon Reyes. Reyes discusses the history of the Union Cultural Mexicana and Mexican immigration to the United States beginning in the 1910s, including his own in 1917. He also discusses other organizations, including the Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana, and shares stories about other individuals and businesses in the Kansas City Mexican community. He recalls working a variety of jobs, including at Wilson and Cudahy packinghouses and cooking at Putsch's 210 restaurant, health concerns among immigrants in the 1920s, and fishing discrimination in schools and hospitals, and notes a visit to Kansas City by Eleanor Roosevelt.