Missouri is a double landlocked state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it borders Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center and into the Mississippi River, which makes up the eastern border. With over six million residents, it is the 18th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capital is Jefferson City.
Atchison is a city and county seat of Atchison County, Kansas, United States, along the Missouri River. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 10,885. The city is named in honor of US Senator David Rice Atchison from Missouri and was the original eastern terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Atchison is also the home of Benedictine College.
Lawrence is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas and Wakarusa Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 94,934. Lawrence as well as Douglas County are part of the Kansas City–Overland Park–Kansas City, Missouri Combined Statistical Area. Lawrence is a college town and the home to both the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.
The U.S. state of Kansas, located on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, was the home of nomadic Native American tribes who hunted the vast herds of bison. In around 1450 AD, the Wichita People founded the great city of Etzanoa. The city of Etzanoa was abandoned in around 1700 AD. The region was explored by Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century. It was later explored by French fur trappers who traded with the Native Americans. Most of Kansas became permanently part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. When the area was opened to settlement by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 it became a battlefield that helped cause the American Civil War. Settlers from North and South came in order to vote slavery down or up. The free state element prevailed.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
The Missouri Plan is a method for the selection of judges. It originated in Missouri in 1940 and has been adopted by many states of the United States. Similar methods are used in some other countries.
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri and Kansas. With 8,472 square miles (21,940 km2) and a population of more than 2.2 million people, it is the second-largest metropolitan area centered in Missouri and is the largest metropolitan area in Kansas, though Wichita is the largest metropolitan area centered in Kansas. Alongside Kansas City, Missouri, these are the suburbs with populations above 100,000: Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; Independence, Missouri; and Lee's Summit, Missouri.
Andrew Taylor Still was the founder of osteopathic medicine. He was also a physician and surgeon, author, inventor and Kansas territorial and state legislator. He was one of the founders of Baker University, the oldest four-year college in the state of Kansas, and was the founder of the American School of Osteopathy, the world's first osteopathic medical school, in Kirksville, Missouri.
Arthur Capper was an American politician from Kansas. He was the 20th governor of Kansas from 1915 to 1919 and a United States senator from 1919 to 1949. He also owned a radio station, and was the publisher of a newspaper, the Topeka Daily Capital.
Jayhawker and red leg are terms that came to prominence in Kansas Territory during the Bleeding Kansas period of the 1850s; they were adopted by militant bands affiliated with the free-state cause during the American Civil War. These gangs were guerrillas who often clashed with pro-slavery groups from Missouri, known at the time in Kansas Territory as "Border Ruffians" or "Bushwhackers". After the Civil War, the word "Jayhawker" became synonymous with the people of Kansas, or anybody born in Kansas. Today a modified version of the term, Jayhawk, is used as a nickname for a native-born Kansan.
The Kyiv Post is the oldest English-language newspaper in Ukraine, founded in October 1995 by Jed Sunden. In November 2021, following an editorial disagreement, the Kyiv Post fired all of its reporters, many of whom founded and joined the Kyiv Independent.
The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) is a progressive national newspaper in the United States that reports on issues related to the Catholic Church. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, NCR was founded by Robert Hoyt in 1964. Hoyt wanted to bring the professional standards of secular news reporting to the press that covers Catholic news, saying that "if the mayor of a city owned its only newspaper, its citizens will not learn what they need and deserve to know about its affairs". The publication, which operates outside the authority of the Catholic Church, is independently owned and governed by a lay board of directors.
Metropolitan Community College (MCC) is a public community college system in the U.S. state of Missouri. The system consists of four physical campuses in Kansas City, Independence, and Lee's Summit, as well as the MCC-Online campus. The campuses had a total enrollment of 13,376 for the fall semester of 2023. The college's athletic teams are known as the Wolves. It is not affiliated with Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska.
The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley, and Kit Bradley serving on its board of directors. All are descendants of family patriarch Henry D. Bradley and his son, David Bradley Sr.
During the American Civil War, Missouri was a hotly contested border state populated by both Union and Confederate sympathizers. It sent armies, generals, and supplies to both sides, maintained dual governments, and endured a bloody neighbor-against-neighbor intrastate war within the larger national war.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Kansas was the newest U.S. state, admitted just months earlier in January. The state had formally rejected slavery by popular vote and vowed to fight on the side of the Union, though ideological divisions with neighboring Missouri, a slave state, had led to violent conflict in previous years and persisted for the duration of the war.
The Show-Me Institute, or SMI, is an American think tank based in St. Louis, Missouri that promotes public policies that advance free market principles. Founded in 2005, the organization focuses on economic and good governance issues in the state of Missouri. The stated mission of the Show-Me Institute is "improving the quality of life for all citizens of Missouri by advancing sensible, well-researched solutions to state and local policy issues." The Institute opened a branch office in Kansas City in 2014.
The Appeal to Reason was a weekly left-wing political newspaper published in the American Midwest from 1895 until 1922. The paper was known for its politics, lending support over the years to the Farmers' Alliance and People's Party before becoming a mainstay of the Socialist Party of America, following that organization's establishment in 1901. Making use of a network of highly motivated volunteers known as the "Appeal Army" to spur subscription sales, paid circulation of the Appeal climbed to more than a quarter-million copies by 1906 and half a million by 1910, making it the largest-circulation socialist newspaper in American history.
James Dallas Bowser was a journalist and educator in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the principal of Lincoln School there from 1868-1879 and later the principal of Attucks School. He was a civil rights leader in the city and was widely known for his poem, "Take up the Black Man's Burden", written in 1899 in response to British poet Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Bowser was a member of the Citizen's League of Kansas City Inter-Racial Committee.
