page_title: Tom Pendergast
section_title: Chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Club
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Pendergast / Chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Club
caption_attribution_description: English: Tom Pendergast headquarters at 1908 Main and Monroe Hotel in Kansas City. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 4000395
context_page_description: Thomas Joseph Pendergast, also known as T.J. Pendergast, was an American political boss who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from 1925 to 1939. Although he only briefly held elected office as an alderman, Pendergast, in his capacity as Chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Party, was able to use his large network of family and friends to help elect politicians and hand out government contracts and patronage jobs. He became wealthy in the process, although his addiction to gambling, especially horse racing, later led to a large accumulation of personal debts. In 1939, he was convicted of income tax evasion and served 15 months in a Federal prison. The Pendergast organization helped launch the political career of Harry S. Truman, a fact that caused Truman's enemies to dub him "The Senator from Pendergast."
  Two of his biographers have summed up Pendergast's uniqueness:
context_section_description: Pendergast ruled from a simple, two-story yellow brick building at 1908 Main Street. Messages marked with his red scrawl were used to secure all manner of favors. He was unquestionably corrupt and there were regularly shootouts and beatings on election days during his watch. However, the permissive go-go days also gave rise to the golden era of Kansas City jazz (now commemorated at the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Vine) as well as a golden era of Kansas City building. Pendergast tried to portray a "common touch" and made attention grabbing displays of helping pay medical bills, provide "jobs", and hosted famous Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for the poor. Often due to fraud and intimidation Kansas City voter turnout tended to be close to 100 percent in the Pendergast days.
  Despite Prohibition, Pendergast's machine and a bribed police force allowed alcohol and gambling. Additionally many elections were fixed to keep political friends in power. In return, Pendergast's companies like Ready-Mixed Concrete were awarded government contracts. Under a $40 million bond program the city constructed many civic buildings during the Depression. Among these projects were the Jackson County courthouse in downtown Kansas City, and the concrete "paving" of Brush Creek near the Country Club Plaza. (A local urban legend, that bodies of Pendergast opponents were buried under the Brush Creek concrete, was finally put to rest when the concrete was torn up for a renewal project in the 1980s.) He also had a hand in other projects like the Power and Light Building, Fidelity Bank and Trust Building, Municipal Auditorium, and the construction of inner-city high schools.
  Pendergast was able to place many of his associates in positions of authority throughout Jackson County and also exercised strong influence in determining the Democratic candidates for statewide office, as when he picked Guy Brasfield Park as Democratic candidate for Missouri Governor in 1932 when the previous candidate, Francis Wilson, died two weeks before the election. Pendergast also extended his rule into neighboring cities such as Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas where members of his family had set up branches of the Ready-Mixed Concrete company. The Pendergast stamp was to be found in the packing plant industries, local politics, bogus construction contracts and the jazz scene in those cities.
caption: Pendergast ruled from the second floor of the yellow brick building at 1908 Main Street. It is not on the National Register of Historic Places although the neighboring Monroe Hotel is included in the listing. (Photo from August 2006).
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