JCHS Featured in New Ken Burns Documentary “Hemingway”

Members of the Jackson County Historical Society are always interested to see the latest Ken Burns documentary. 

That was especially so this month, when the new “Hemingway” documentary – co-directed by Burns and colleague Lynn Novick – appeared on KCPT-TV in Kansas City. 

For its documentary on author Ernest Hemingway, Florentine Films – the Burns-affiliated production company – purchased reproduction rights to several photographs from the Society archives. 

One particular photograph, which appears briefly in the documentary’s initial installment, depicted several men being escorted by a law enforcement officer down what appears to be a gangplank. 

The photograph is used in the documentary to suggest the rugged nature of Kansas City in 1917 and 1918, when the teenaged Hemingway spent approximately six-and-a-half months as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. 

“Kansas City was a tough, wide-open town…” the documentary’s narrator says as the image briefly appears. 

“Hemingway covered shootings, stabbings, labor troubles, a smallpox scare. He was fascinated by all of it and echoes of what he had heard and seen in Kansas City would appear again and again in his later writing.” 

The photo, one of hundreds of archival images artfully arranged by the filmmakers, also serves as an example of the vivid technique so often seen in Florentine Films documentaries. 

In “Hemingway,” the camera focuses on the man wearing a badge – a universal symbol of law enforcement. Then, as the camera pulls back, the viewer sees the line of apparent prisoners. 

Then the image disappears without explanation. 

So – just what was going on in that photograph? 

Information accompanying the image in the Society archives detail that the men indeed were prisoners who were photographed when being taken from Kansas City to Jefferson City by riverboat in 1914. The notes further advise that Harry C. Hoffman, who served as Jackson County marshal from 1917 through 1920, sometimes personally accompanied prisoners on their Missouri River trips to Jefferson City from 1913 through 1916 while serving as deputy marshal. 

The archives notes also cite contemporaneous Kansas City Star articles that the prisoners, when riding the boat to Jefferson City, often wore leg irons. Close examination of the photo will reveal a pair of men – standing behind the officer with the badge – who perhaps are connected by ankle chains. 

This particular image – as well as many thousands more – soon will be available through the Society’s new Digital History Database, which will allow virtual visitors to browse the archives and order digital copies. 

Watch for the news of the opening of the database to the public later this year. 

Learn more about the new documentary “Hemingway” airing on KCPT here.

- Brian Burnes, Jackson County Historical Society