Your walk through downtown passes through the shadow of one of the most powerful and corrupt political machines in American history. Tom Pendergast ran Kansas City from the 1920s into the late 1930s with an iron grip that would have impressed Tammany Hall. He controlled elections through ballot stuffing and voter intimidation, handed out city contracts to favored businesses — including his own concrete company — and famously kept the saloons, gambling dens, and jazz clubs open around the clock in defiance of Prohibition and common decency, as he saw it.
In a city where the nightlife never stopped, music thrived. Pendergast's 'open city' policy made 18th and Vine possible. He also mentored a young Jackson County judge named Harry Truman, launching a political career that would reach the White House.
In 1939, the machine finally collapsed: Pendergast was convicted of tax evasion on $430,000 in unreported income — bribes from insurance companies — and sentenced to federal prison. He died in 1945, two years after his release. Kansas City today is a cleaner city for his fall, and a musically richer city for his reign.