Building Bridges: An Anthology of the War on Prostitution and the Greater Women’s Movement in Kansas City

Abstract

This research looks at Kansas City’s War on Prostitution in 1977 and the larger women’s movement of second-wave feminism throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The War on Prostitution makes the women’s movement in Kansas City unique because it brought together non-like-minded feminists despite their differences in ideology. A product of both oral history and traditional historical research, this work draws upon a large variety of primary sources including newspaper articles from the Kansas City Public Library, archived materials pertaining to women’s groups from the LaBudde Special Collections Archive at University of Missouri-Kansas City. At the core of the project is an oral history component of phone conversations and interviews with women who were active in varying areas of Kansas City public life, including politics, activism, and law during the early decades of the women’s movement. The interviews were conducted from August to November of 2017. Research also included secondary sources on the topic of second-wave feminism and feminist theory. The work serves as a platform for future research on the women’s movement, the War on Prostitution, and the lives of prominent women in Kansas City’s history. It is a testament to the women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s and the remarkable women who were involved in it.