From the West Bottoms packing houses to backyard grills and championship stages, crowning the king of smoked meats through competitive barbecuing is as much a Kansas City culinary tradition as burnt ends.

Historian Michael Wells traces barbecue’s early roots in the city’s Stockyards District and its rise as a livelihood for Black entrepreneurs in a segregated city to its transformation into a postwar suburban hobby and the emergence of sanctioned competitions. This culminated in the American Royal’s World Series of Barbecue, which was held in the West Bottoms until it moved in 2015.

The program also marks the return of competition barbecue to the West Bottoms with the HWBA’s Heritage Days Backyard Barbecue on May 15.

Wells is the senior librarian for the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections. He regularly contributes to The Kansas City Star’s “What’s Your KCQ?” series, covering a wide range of local history topics, and has curated exhibitions exploring Kansas City’s 1950s and '60s urban renewal era and the construction of Bruce R. Watkins Drive. His research interests include postwar urban planning, housing segregation, and the development of Kansas City’s identity as the barbecue capital of the world.