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Bonnie Parker's hideout

The shootout that catapulted Bonnie & Clyde to stardom happened right here in Missouri. Bonnie Parker and her man, Clyde Barrow were staying in a loft apartment at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge Drive in Joplin with Buck & Blanche Barrow & W.D. Jones. The gang lived in the apartment for only about 3 weeks in 1933, but during that time were conspicuous enough to attract attention from the law.

On April 13th, two policemen were shot & killed while trying to serve a warrant to the group for suspected bootlegging. The gang members escaped with only a few scrapes, but had to leave to quick they left behind all their belongings: including poems written by Bonnie and rolls of film that finally put faces to the infamous "Bonnie and Clyde."

Today you can rent their hideout for a night or just drive by and see it at the corner of E 34th Street and Oak Ridge Drive.

Bonnie & Clyde's Joplin Hideout

“. . . I improvised, crazed by the music. . . . Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.”

Josephine Baker only spent the first 15 years of her life in Missouri but she is one of the most well known women to have spent time in the state. She was born in St. Louis, dirt poor, and as a teen attracted attention for her street dancing which landed her in several vaudville shows. She was soon swept off to New York and became a part of the Harlem Rennaisance, dancing as a chorus girl in numerous broadway plays.

Josephine Baker came from extremely humble beginnings and yet developed the confidence and skills to achieve anything she set her mind to. She went against the grain of main stream society - not only in her performances (appearing nude), but also in her efforts to fight for civil rights (forcing integration by refusing to perform for segregated audiences). Baker did all sorts of interesting things: spied on the Nazis, adopted a dozen children, lived in a castle.

She's got a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame at 6501 Delmar, and is included in the Hall of Famous Missourians in Jefferson City.

Official Josephine Baker Site

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Every woman who votes has Virginia Minor to thank for it. She launched the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri in 1867, and five years later became a part of a nation-wide throwdown about women's rights. She first attempted to register to vote and when denied, her husband sued the St. Louis register of voters on her behalf (did you think women could file a lawsuit? Nope). Based on rights outlined in the 14th Amendment, she claimed it was illegal to deny her the right to vote because she was a native-born, free, white citizen of the United States & the State of Missouri over the age of 21. The case was first heard at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, and eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court, who ruled that suffrage was not coextensive with citizenship. Although she lost the lawsuit, she was still really tough for trying to shake things up.

Her grave is in Bellefontaine Cemetery in Block 51, Lot 1623. And while you're there, don't forget to stomp on the grave of Smith Gant, just across the road in block 33, lot 2824, who represented the voting commissioner in Ms. Minor's Lawsuit.

Minor v. Happersett

From Humansville to Hollywood

Zoe Akins wrote a play in the early 1950s called The Greeks Had a Word For It. In 1953, it was adapted for the screen as, How to Marry a Millionaire. Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauran Bacall starred in the film, and it made Marilyn Monroe popular. Zoe Akins's time in Hollywood came at the culmination of her career, a career where she competed with men playwrights, but was still able to attain a measure of success.

She was born in Humansville in 1886 and went to school at Hosmer Hall (an all girls school in St. Louis) where she studied theater and drama. Writing was her main interest and she wrote over 40 plays, 18 were produced on Broadway. In 1935 she received a Pulitzer Prize for drama for her adaption of The Old Maid.

She passed away in Los Angeles, California in 1958. Check out this book about her life's work.

"It just doesn't do to wear skirts in these." - Amelia in Springfield -

Amelia Earhart brought her controversial self to Springfield, Missouri in June of 1931 ... which begs the question, where was the municipal airport in 1931???

“Not rebuked, Amelia says,” Springfield (Mo.) Press, June 20, 1931, page 1.
A slim sunburned girl Saturday landed her yellow auto-giro at Municipal airport and chatted in a friendly manner with attendants while her plane was being refueled.
The girl was Amelia Earhart Putnam, one of America’s most famous women fliers, who was on her way to St. Louis in a cross-country experimental autogiro flight. Looking even more like her famous colleague, Charles Lindbergh, than her pictures indicate, she spoke of the “wonderful trip” Lindy is planning and said she has no immediate plans for the future except for more experimental autogiros.
“They are interesting machines,” she said, “and we are expecting great things of them. Of course, they are just in an experimental stage. There really is no comparison between giros and planes. These land easily. I dropped down like a bird here this morning without a bit of roll. They won’t go into a dive and they won’t roll in air. [Illegible passage]
The autogiros are in too much of an experimental stage to say much about what they will do, she said. She was flying an autogiro loaned her and said she “must hurry back with it.” Rumors that she had been reprimanded and even grounded by aviation officials because of alleged carelessness in handling her autogiro in Texas were branded as false by the aviatrix. “As soon as I heard the report I wired aviation department officials about it,” she said, “and they hadn’t heard it. Of course they don’t ground you suddenly. They have a hearing and you are allowed to state your side of the case. I don’t know where the report came from -- department officials didn’t give it out.”
This was Mrs. Putnam’s first landing in Springfield, she said, but she has flown over here several times. “I think you can get the character of a city better by flying over it,” she said, “they stand out quite distinctly.” [Illegible passage]
Her windblown hair, tousled in attractive disarray about her freckled, tanned face, she looked more like a laughing youth than the famous woman she is. She was wearing jodhpurs, polished tan boots, a leather jacket, and a shirt open at the throat. Her head was bare until she climbed into the cockpit, when she pulled a helmet over her head.
“It just doesn’t do to wear skirts in these,” she explained as she climbed over the side of the cockpit. Besides flying she likes to go horseback riding and swimming. She is unusually healthy she said, but has no special set of exercises. She never drinks tea or coffee--doesn’t know why--but never has learned to like them. She doesn’t smoke and her “strongest drink” is buttermilk, she said.
She jockeyed her autogiro into position and the crowd, warned that it would be dusty, stood back while the revolving blades of the “windmill” gathered speed. The plane roared down the field a few yards and rose abruptly into air.

Fannie Hurst

Fun fact: one of the 2 highest paid authors (male or female) in 1925 grew up in Missouri: Fannie Hurst. No, not from the publishing family, rather, a child born to Jewish immigrants, who grew up as a sheltered only child and graduated from Washington University in 1909. Fannie had a thirst for social knowledge. She shunned her family's support and took a job at a department store in St. Louis to observe "regular people."

She continued her quest in New York City, originally planning to attend Columbia University, but never finishing. Instead she attended the college of life - supporting herself by being a nursemaid, waitress and working in stores all the while studying people. She even frequented tenement homes to see raw humanity.

Her goal? To write. In her twenties, she became a highly successful author, writing novel after novel - several of which were made into ragingly popular movies (Lummox, The Imitation of Life, Backstreet...). Fannie did have her haters, most of whom criticized her for being trashy and overly sentimental. Trashy her novels may be, but because of the deep characterizations, I can't put them down. Nor can I put down her autobiography, The Anatomy of Me, which is full of her observations from mid-20th century living.

Fannie married Jaques Danielson, a Russian pianist in 1915, and in a highly controversial move kept her maiden name, lived separate from Danielson, and kept their marriage a total secret. They also had an agreement to renew their marriage every 5 years only IF they both agreed to stay married. How he picked up his own socks, and made his own meals is still unknown.

A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, she tried to foster social knowledge and acceptance.

You can visit Fannie's grave in The New Mt. Sinai Cemetery on Gravois Road in St. Louis. She died of cancer in 1968, was cremated and buried with her parents and grandparents in lot I-161.