The civil rights era in Kansas City spanned the decades from the end of World War II to roughly 1980, during which a thoroughly segregated city slowly and unevenly dismantled its legal colour line. The same decades saw the federal highway program cut through Black Kansas City — the South Midtown Freeway alone destroyed 2,000 homes and displaced thousands of Black residents1 — organized Black political power rise through Freedom Inc., and the deadly 1968 uprising that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Summary

The civil rights era in Kansas City runs from the close of World War II in 1945 to roughly 1980. Over that span, formal segregation gave way under federal pressure — Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — while de facto segregation hardened through restrictive covenants, blockbusting, highway construction and white flight. on the federal statutes and dates, which are national background carried on this page without citation.

The era’s defining contradiction is that legal gains arrived alongside physical destruction. As Jim Crow ended on paper, federally funded urban renewal and the interstate highway program demolished the geographic and economic base of Black Kansas City.

Black political organizing matured in this period, most consequentially through Freedom Inc., the Black political club founded by Leon Jordan and Bruce R. Watkins.23 Freedom Inc. became the engine of Black electoral power in Kansas City, electing Missouri state representatives from 1963 onward, Alan Wheat to Congress in 1982, and Emanuel Cleaver as the city’s first Black mayor in 1991.3

Segregation, Troost, and the covenant system

Who Troost Avenue is named for

The Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, working through the “What’s your KCQ?” community reference project, addressed the question directly in 2021: yes, Troost Avenue is named for a slaveholder. Dr. Benoist Troost, born in Holland in 1776, came to Kansas City around 1847 after serving as a hospital steward in Napoleon’s army and became the city’s first resident physician; he was a trustee when the Town of Kansas was incorporated in 1850 and again when the Missouri General Assembly incorporated the city in 1853, and he built the area’s first brick hotel, the Gillis House, in partnership with William Gillis.4 Federal census records show him holding two enslaved people in 1840 and six by 1850.54

The KCQ investigation also corrected the specific version of the story it was asked about: the reader asked whether Troost had “a plantation at 31st and Troost.” The plantation there was owned by a preacher, not by Troost.4 Before it was a street, the route was an Osage hunting trail and path to the Missouri River; treaties between 1808 and 1825 displaced the Osage.4

How Troost became the line

Troost was not always a boundary. KCUR’s account has it beginning as “Millionaire’s Row” between 26th and 32nd Streets in the 1880s boom; when the economy crashed in 1890, “home prices dropped, opening them up to the less-affluent African-American community.”6

The line was then made, deliberately, by several overlapping mechanisms:

  • Restrictive covenants. Developer J.C. Nichols was among the first in Kansas City to use deed restrictions, declarations of restrictions in official records, high price points and homes associations to exclude people of colour from his developments; his covenants barred Black and Jewish residents from buying or renting in his neighbourhoods, and through his roles in local and national real estate organizations his methods shaped restrictive covenant and zoning practice nationally.7 KCUR reports that his covenants “all but ensured Black and Jewish residents would not be able to move into the Country Club Plaza.”6
  • Zoning. Ordinances passed in 1923 “helped keep Black residents on the East Side.”6
  • Blockbusting. Some scholars argue Nichols orchestrated panic-selling and blockbusting to move white residents from east of Troost into his western developments; panic selling and blockbusting “were common in Kansas City up until at least 1970.”6
  • School attendance boundaries. KCUR dates the formal hardening of the line to 1955, when the Kansas City school board drew attendance boundaries after desegregation orders using Troost as “the most obvious border” between white and Black schools.6

The wealth consequence is measurable. KCUR examined homes listed for sale in July 1963 on both sides of Troost; by 2018, Zillow list prices for those same homes ranged from $45,017 to $363,222, with the lower values east of Troost and the higher values west.8 The report frames the national context bluntly: Black families hold roughly $1 of wealth for every $10 held by white families, much of it rooted in housing policy.8

The claim, carried on earlier versions of this page, that the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation graded 18th and Vine “hazardous” in the 1930s and that FHA and VA programs then used those grades for decades to deny credit, is standard in the redlining literature but was not confirmed against a source in this pass.

Highways and the destruction of Black Kansas City

The most consequential physical intervention of the era was the South Midtown Freeway — U.S. 71, now signed I-49 through the city and named Bruce R. Watkins Drive. KCUR’s history of the project establishes both its scale and the fact that its route was a choice:1

YearEvent
1947City publishes its Master Plan
1951South Midtown Freeway first identified in an expressway development plan
1956Federal-Aid Highway Act signed
1959Country Club Freeway proposed as an alternative route — rejected after opposition from the affluent white neighbourhoods it would have crossed
1965City abandons the Country Club Freeway and selects the eastern route through Black neighbourhoods
1968State authorizes property acquisition
1973Federal lawsuit filed challenging the project
1985Consent decree redesigns the project as a parkway
1986Renamed Bruce R. Watkins Drive, for the city’s first Black council member and a leading opponent of the project
1990Southern section completed (Bannister Road to 75th Street)
2001Final section completed (31st Street to the downtown loop); the project had taken 50 years

The ten-mile highway ran east of Troost through Oak Park, Blue Hills and Town Fork Creek, among other Black communities, from Bannister Road to the downtown loop. It destroyed 2,000 homes and displaced thousands of Black residents; the NAACP put the number of people whose livelihoods were affected at approximately 25,000.1

That the road bears Watkins’s name is a documented irony rather than a tribute of his own making: KCUR identifies him as a leading opponent of the project it honours him with.1

18th and Vine

The 18th and Vine District was the cultural and economic anchor of Black Kansas City and, in the first half of the 20th century, “the hub of African-American cultural activity in Kansas City.”9

Claims carried on earlier versions of this page that could not be confirmed in this pass and are therefore not asserted here in the vault’s own voice: that the 1947 integration of Major League Baseball — beginning with Jackie Robinson’s departure from the Kansas City Monarchs — collapsed the Negro Leagues’ institutional base within fifteen years and removed an economic anchor from 18th and Vine; that Interstate 70 was routed through Black neighbourhoods east of downtown; that downtown renewal cleared Black-owned property for redevelopment that excluded Black ownership; and that the program was renamed “Negro removal” within Black communities. Each is standard in the literature; none was sourced here.

School desegregation and Missouri v. Jenkins

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) struck down segregated public schooling, and its lead case originated in Topeka. on the decision date and the consolidation of parallel cases.

Kansas City, Missouri’s schools remained segregated in practice long afterward, and that persistence produced one of the most ambitious desegregation interventions in American history. Jenkins v. Kansas City, Missouri School District began in 1977, when a group of students and the KCMSD itself sued the State of Missouri.10 In 1985 the district court found Missouri liable for segregation within the district’s boundaries, and Judge Russell Clark ordered educational improvement programs, school facility repairs and magnet schools; the district courts mandated salary assistance in 1987, and in 1993 ordered the state to pay for salary increases for teaching and non-teaching personnel.10

Three cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court under the name Missouri v. Jenkins:10

  • 1989 (491 U.S. 274) — attorney’s fees
  • 1990 (495 U.S. 33) — federal courts could order tax levies to fund desegregation remedies
  • 1995 (515 U.S. 70) — the district court’s orders “went beyond the court’s remedial authority”

The frequently cited figure of more than $2 billion in court-ordered spending, and the date court supervision of the district ended, were not established by the source consulted here.

The 1968 uprising

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 4, 1968 set off unrest in cities across the country. Kansas City was an outlier in timing: the city held until April 9, the day of King’s funeral, because the trigger was local.11

On April 8, Kansas City Public Schools decided to keep schools open on April 9 rather than close them for the funeral. KCPS coordinator Alvin Brooks later put it plainly: the decision “wasn’t good enough for [the community], but it was good enough for [KCPS]… As a result of that, we had a riot.”11 Students walked out; as non-students joined the march, the district dismissed school. Protesters marched downtown, and Mayor Ilus Davis met them at Parade Park. After remarks, the crowd was told to disperse — but because of poor sound many “did not hear the announcement,” and police deployed tear gas in response to a single soft-drink bottle thrown that “wasn’t even close to the officers.” Davis publicly apologized for the escalation.11

The sequence that followed:11

  • April 9 — curfew at 8:00 p.m.; one death and nine injuries; Governor Warren Hearnes authorized 1,000 Missouri National Guardsmen
  • April 10 — curfew at 9:00 p.m.; five further deaths and 11 civilian injuries; the Guard deployment increased to 2,900
  • April 11 — activity diminished considerably
  • April 12 — Mayor Davis and Police Chief Kelley met with young protesters, “quickly ushering about an end to the violence”

Totals: six civilians killed, approximately 40 civilians and 26 officers injured (plus four more officers on April 10), and between 300 and 1,042 people arrested.11 (Earlier versions of this page gave the Guard escalation as “about 1,700 troops to roughly 2,900”; the source gives 1,000 to 2,900. The same versions stated that all six of the dead were Black Kansas Citians — the source consulted does not state the victims’ race.)

In May 1968 Mayor Davis established a commission, which published its findings in August with 17 recommendations to the police department, 12 to the school district, 9 to other municipal authorities and 5 with no particular target audience.11

The fullest primary-source account is UMKC Libraries’ “Eight Days in April: The Story of the 1968 Uprising in Kansas City,” drawn from LaBudde Special Collections and the Marr Sound Archives — first-hand interviews, radio broadcasts, news clippings and photographs — created in partnership with the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center and Museum and the Prospect Business Association, with funding from the Missouri Humanities Council. The underlying materials were compiled in 2013 as the “1968 Riot Collection,” and were later revised by Dr. Anthony J. LaBat to correct biased language in the original archivists’ framing.12

See 1968-kc-riots for the detailed entry.

Black political organizing: Freedom Inc., Leon Jordan, Bruce Watkins

Freedom Inc.

Freedom Inc. was founded by Leon M. Jordan and Bruce R. Watkins with Howard Maupin, Charles Moore and Fred Curls; Jordan and Watkins were elected its first chairman and co-chairman.3 It was established “to give black voters more influence and to develop black candidates for political office.”2

Sources differ on the founding year. Wikipedia’s article on Freedom, Inc. gives 1961;3 its article on Leon Jordan,13 UMKC Libraries14 and the City of Kansas City’s African American Heritage Trail2 all give 1962. Earlier versions of this page gave April 1962; the month was not confirmed here.

In 1963, with a public accommodations ordinance on the ballot, Freedom Inc. under Jordan’s leadership conducted “one of the most significant voter registration drives ever seen in Kansas City.”2 Missouri state representatives were elected with its backing from 1963; in 1964 Freedom Inc. put forward eight candidates and seven won, Jordan among them.133 It later backed Alan Wheat, elected to Congress in 1982 — described as the first Black congressman to represent a majority-white district in the Greater Kansas City area — and Emanuel Cleaver, elected Kansas City’s first Black mayor in 1991.3

Leon Jordan

Leon Mercer Jordan (May 6, 1905 - July 15, 1970) joined the Kansas City Police Department in 1938, served sixteen years, and became the first African American to reach the rank of lieutenant in the department.2 Granted an extended leave of absence in 1947, he moved to Liberia, lived there eight years and organized a 450-man police force;2 Liberian President William Tubman made him a Chevalier of the Order of the African Star in 1948.13 He left police work soon after returning and opened the Green Duck Tavern at 2548 Prospect Avenue, which became the organizing centre of Black Kansas City politics.2

A minor conflict on the police career: the African American Heritage Trail and Wikipedia give 1938 as the year he joined the KCPD;213 UMKC Libraries gives 1936 and sixteen years of service with five years on leave.14

Jordan served three terms in the Missouri House and was campaigning for a fourth when, at approximately 1:00 a.m. on July 15, 1970, he was shot at close range as he closed the Green Duck — killed by three blasts from a Remington 12-gauge shotgun that had been stolen in 1965.213 (UMKC gives the time as about 1:15 a.m.14)

Three men were arrested; one was acquitted and charges were dropped against the other two. A 2010 Kansas City Star investigation prompted police to reopen the case, but no one was indicted because all the alleged perpetrators were by then deceased.13 UMKC’s exhibit states that a second KCPD investigation “eventually identified his murderer,” prompting Dr. Robert M. Farnsworth to revise his manuscript accordingly.14 The two accounts are compatible only in the sense that identification is not indictment; both are recorded here.

The Leon M. Jordan Memorial Park at 31st Street and Benton Boulevard, with a statue of Jordan, was dedicated in 1975; the Green Duck Tavern was listed on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places on September 15, 2015.2

Bruce R. Watkins

Bruce R. Watkins (March 20, 1924, Parkville, Missouri - September 13, 1980, Kansas City) was the first African American elected to the Kansas City City Council, in 1963; the first elected to county administration, in 1966; and in April 1979 came close to winning the mayoralty.15 (Earlier versions of this page said he was born in Kansas City; the source gives Parkville. His schooling at Lincoln High School and Howard University, his assumption of Freedom Inc.’s leadership after Jordan’s assassination, and the traffic accident given as his cause of death were all carried unsourced and could not be confirmed.)

Three landmarks honour him: the Spirit of Freedom fountain at Brush Creek Boulevard and Cleveland Avenue, the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center at Blue Parkway and Cleveland Avenue, and Bruce R. Watkins Drive, completed October 22, 2001.15

Legacy and commemoration

The museums at 18th and Vine

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was founded in 1990 by former Negro league players including Buck O’Neil and Larry Lester, beginning in a single-room office in the Lincoln Building at 18th and Vine, expanding to 2,000 square feet in 1994 and moving in 1997 into a purpose-built 10,000-square-foot structure it shares with the American Jazz Museum.9 O’Neil served on the museum’s board until his death on October 6, 2006.9

Plans to relocate the museum to the old Paseo YMCA building and build a Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center there were put on hold during the financial difficulties of 2008.9 (Earlier versions of this page stated the Paseo YMCA had been restored as the O’Neil centre; the source consulted does not support that.) on the building’s current status.

The Black Archives of Mid-America preserves primary materials on Black Kansas City.

Renamings

J.C. Nichols. On June 30, 2020, following months of debate and increased public attention to Nichols’s restrictive covenants, the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted unanimously to remove his name from the fountain on the Country Club Plaza and to return the adjacent J.C. Nichols Parkway to its original name, Mill Creek Parkway.16

The Paseo. The Kansas City Council renamed The Paseo for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in January 2019. On November 5, 2019, city voters approved Question 5, which asked whether to change the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. — “approximately 9.98 miles in length from the center line of Lexington Avenue south and east to a point south of the center line of East 85th Street” — back to The Paseo Boulevard. It passed 31,446 to 13,990 — 69.21 percent to 30.79 percent.17 See paseo-mlk-renaming-saga. The claim that the reversal was driven in part by the Council having bypassed the city’s own resident-approval rules was carried on this page unsourced.

Troost. Proposals to rename Troost Avenue — “Truth Avenue” among the names floated — remained live but unresolved as of a KCTV5 fact-check published May 6, 2025, which established Benoist Troost’s slaveholding from the 1840 and 1850 censuses but did not report a proposal at any particular stage of adoption.5

Key figures of the era

FigureRoleWiki page
Leon JordanFreedom Inc. co-founder; KCPD’s first Black lieutenant; Missouri House; assassinated July 15, 1970213freedom-inc
Bruce R. WatkinsFreedom Inc. co-founder; first Black city councilman (1963); 1979 mayoral candidate15bruce-r-watkins
Emanuel CleaverFirst Black mayor of Kansas City (1991); later Congressman3emanuel-cleaver
Alvin BrooksKCPS coordinator in April 1968; civic activist11(pending)
Alan WheatElected to Congress 1982 with Freedom Inc. backing3(pending)
J.C. NicholsDeveloper; pioneer of racially restrictive covenants7(pending)
Benoist TroostNamesake of Troost Avenue; slaveholder; city’s first resident physician4(pending)
Buck O’NeilNegro Leagues player and manager; NLBM co-founder9(pending)
Lucile BlufordKansas City Call editor; civil-rights journalist(pending)
Mamie HughesCity Council; civil-rights organizer(pending)
Jackie RobinsonKansas City Monarchs; broke the MLB colour linejackie-robinson

Sites in KC associated with the era

  • 18th and Vine Historic District — the hub of African-American cultural activity in Kansas City in the first half of the 20th century9
  • Green Duck Tavern, 2548 Prospect Avenue — Leon Jordan’s tavern and the organizing centre of Freedom Inc.; on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places since September 15, 20152
  • Leon M. Jordan Memorial Park, 31st Street and Benton Boulevard — statue dedicated 19752
  • Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, Blue Parkway and Cleveland Avenue15
  • Spirit of Freedom fountain, Brush Creek Boulevard and Cleveland Avenue15
  • Bruce R. Watkins Drive (U.S. 71 / I-49) — completed October 22, 200115
  • Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and American Jazz Museum — shared purpose-built home at 18th and Vine since 19979
  • Mill Creek Park fountain and Mill Creek Parkway — J.C. Nichols’s name removed June 30, 202016
  • Troost Avenue — the city’s longtime racial dividing line6

Historiography

Two book-length studies underpin the Kansas City literature on race and place. Charles E. Coulter’s “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden”: Kansas City’s African American Communities, 1865-1939 covers the formation of those communities in the period preceding this era,18 and Sherry Lamb Schirmer’s A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960 traces how the racial geography described above was produced.19

Sources

Footnotes

  1. KCUR 89.3 — “Highway 71 tore through Kansas City’s Black neighborhoods. Can that damage be repaired?” (2025-04-30) — asserts: the highway destroyed 2,000 homes and displaced thousands of Black residents, with the NAACP putting the number of people whose livelihoods were affected at approximately 25,000; the ten-mile road ran east of Troost through Oak Park, Blue Hills and Town Fork Creek among other Black communities, from Bannister Road to the downtown loop; timeline — 1947 Master Plan, 1951 South Midtown Freeway identified in an expressway development plan, 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, 1959 Country Club Freeway proposed as an alternative and rejected after opposition from affluent white neighbourhoods, 1965 city abandons that route and chooses the eastern route through Black neighbourhoods, 1968 state authorizes property acquisition, 1973 federal lawsuit filed, 1985 consent decree redesigns the project as a parkway, 1990 southern section completed (Bannister Road to 75th Street), 2001 final section completed (31st Street to the downtown loop), a fifty-year project; renamed Bruce R. Watkins Drive in 1986 to honour Kansas City’s first Black council member “and a leading opponent of the project.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. African American Heritage Trail of Kansas City (City of Kansas City, Missouri, Historic Preservation Office) — “Green Duck Tavern.” — asserts: the Green Duck Tavern at 2548 Prospect Avenue was owned and operated by Leon Jordan; Jordan joined the Police Department in 1938, served sixteen years and became the first African American to reach the rank of lieutenant; granted an extended leave of absence in 1947, he moved to Liberia, lived there eight years and organized a 450-man police force; he left police work soon after returning and launched the Green Duck; in 1962 he founded Freedom Inc. with Bruce Watkins, “established to give black voters more influence and to develop black candidates for political office”; in 1963, with a public accommodations ordinance on the ballot, Freedom Inc. under Jordan conducted “one of the most significant voter registration drives ever seen in Kansas City,” and in 1964 Jordan was elected to the Missouri House; Jordan “was shot at close range in the early morning hours of July 15, 1970, as he was closing his tavern”; the Leon M. Jordan Memorial Park at 31st Street and Benton Boulevard, with a statue, was dedicated in 1975; the Green Duck Tavern was listed on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places on September 15, 2015. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  3. Wikipedia — “Freedom, Inc.”. — [Class A fallback; retained because it conflicts with 2, 13 and 14 on the founding year] asserts: founded 1961 by Bruce Watkins, Howard Maupin, Charles Moore, Fred Curls and Leon Jordan, with Jordan and Watkins elected first chairman and co-chairman respectively; a political organization advancing African-American political power in Kansas City and crucial to the desegregation of Kansas City, Missouri public facilities; elected multiple Missouri state representatives from 1963; backed Alan Wheat in 1982, “the first black Congressman to represent a majority-white district” in the Greater Kansas City area, and Emanuel Cleaver in 1991, “the first black mayor of Kansas City”; Watkins mounted a strong mayoral candidacy in 1978-79. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  4. Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, “What’s your KCQ?” — “Yes, Kansas City’s Troost Avenue was named for a slaveholder. And that’s not all we found…” (May 2021) — asserts: Troost Avenue’s namesake was “a Dutch physician and slave owner”; the slave plantation at 31st and Troost “was owned by a preacher,” not by Troost; Benoist Troost born in Holland in 1776, moved to Kansas City around 1847 after serving as a hospital steward in the Army of Napoleon, was the city’s first resident physician, was a trustee when the Town of Kansas was incorporated in 1850 and again at the 1853 city incorporation, ran for mayor and lost to William S. Gregory, and built the area’s first brick hotel (the Gillis House, completed 1850, with William Gillis), later known as the “free state hotel” and then the “American Hotel” after purchase by the New England Emigrant Aid Company; before it was a street the route was an Osage hunting trail and path to the Missouri River, and treaties between 1808 and 1825 displaced the Osage. (Host returns 403 to plain fetches; retrieved via Firecrawl 2026-08-05.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. KCTV5 — “FACT CHECK: Who Troost Avenue is named after as debates swirl about changing street name” (2025-05-06) — asserts: the 1840 federal census shows Benoist Troost owning two enslaved people, and per the Kansas City Public Library the number had grown to six by 1850; frames this as the historical context for the controversy over his legacy. The article does not identify a specific renaming proposal, proposer, alternative name or stage of adoption. ↩ ↩2

  6. KCUR 89.3 — “How Troost became a major divide in Kansas City” (2014-03-27) — asserts: Troost began as “Millionaire’s Row” between 26th and 32nd Streets in the 1880s boom, and after the 1890 crash “home prices dropped, opening them up to the less-affluent African-American community”; J.C. Nichols’s restrictive covenants “all but ensured Black and Jewish residents would not be able to move into the Country Club Plaza”; zoning ordinances passed in 1923 “helped keep Black residents on the East Side”; some scholars argue Nichols orchestrated panic-selling and blockbusting to drive white residents from east of Troost into his western developments; “panic selling and blockbusting were common in Kansas City up until at least 1970”; the division solidified in 1955 when the Kansas City school board drew attendance boundaries after desegregation orders, using Troost as “the most obvious border” between white and Black schools. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. KCUR 89.3 — “Who Was J.C. Nichols? The Mixed Legacy Of The Man Whose Name Could Be Taken Off Kansas City’s Most Famous Fountain” (2020-06-12) — asserts: Jesse Clyde Nichols built the Country Club Plaza and tree-lined residential subdivisions whose homes continue to appreciate nearly a century later; deed restrictions kept Black, Jewish and other minority residents out of his neighbourhoods, keeping them racially and socioeconomically homogeneous; Nichols was among the first Kansas City developers to use deed restrictions, declarations of restrictions in official records, high price points and homes associations to exclude people of colour, and through local and national real estate organizations his ideas shaped methods for racist and anti-Semitic restrictive covenants and zoning; the residential segregation he perpetuated has had lasting effects on housing policy, education and the lives of Black Kansas Citians. ↩ ↩2

  8. KCUR 89.3 — “Past housing discrimination contributed to wealth gap between Blacks and whites in Kansas City” (2018-08-10) — asserts: Black families hold roughly $1 of wealth for every $10 held by white families, much of it rooted in housing policy; the promotion of racial covenants by developers including J.C. Nichols shaped both Kansas City’s neighbourhood racial distribution and national discriminatory housing policy; KCUR examined homes listed for sale in July 1963 on both sides of Troost, and by 2018 Zillow list prices for those same homes ranged from $45,017 to $363,222, with the lower values east of Troost and the higher west. ↩ ↩2

  9. Wikipedia — “Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: founded in 1990 by former Negro league players including Buck O’Neil and Larry Lester; began in a single-room office in the Lincoln Building at 18th and Vine, expanded to a 2,000-square-foot space in 1994, and in 1997 relocated to a 10,000-square-foot purpose-built structure shared with the American Jazz Museum; the 18th and Vine District was “the hub of African-American cultural activity in Kansas City during the first half of the 20th century”; O’Neil was a co-founder and served on the board until his death on October 6, 2006, and in 2012 his family donated his Presidential Medal of Freedom; plans to relocate the museum to the old YMCA building and build the Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center were put on hold during the 2008 financial difficulties. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  10. Wikipedia — “Missouri v. Jenkins.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: the case began in 1977 when a group of students and the Kansas City, Missouri School District sued the State of Missouri; in 1985 the district court found Missouri liable for segregated schools within KCMSD’s boundaries and Judge Russell Clark ordered educational improvement programs, school facility repairs and magnet schools; in 1987 the district courts mandated salary assistance; in 1993 the district court ordered the state to pay for salary increases for teaching and non-teaching personnel; three Supreme Court decisions followed — 1989 (491 U.S. 274, attorney’s fees), 1990 (495 U.S. 33, courts may order tax levies to fund desegregation remedies), and 1995 (515 U.S. 70, the desegregation orders “went beyond the court’s remedial authority”). Gives no total cost figure and no end date for court supervision. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Wikipedia — “1968 Kansas City, Missouri, riot.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: the riot was triggered locally rather than by King’s April 4 assassination — on April 8 Kansas City Public Schools decided to keep schools open on April 9, the day of the funeral, and KCPS coordinator Alvin Brooks said the decision “wasn’t good enough for [the community], but it was good enough for [KCPS]… As a result of that, we had a riot”; students walked out and marched, and school was dismissed as non-students joined; Mayor Davis met protesters at Parade Park, the dispersal announcement went unheard because of poor sound, and police deployed tear gas over “one single, soft drink bottle [which] wasn’t even close to the officers,” for which Davis publicly apologized; April 9 curfew 8:00 p.m., one death and nine injuries, Governor Warren Hearnes authorized 1,000 Missouri National Guardsmen; April 10 curfew 9:00 p.m., five further deaths and 11 civilian injuries, Guard increased to 2,900; totals of 6 civilians killed, ~40 civilians and 26 officers injured plus 4 more officers on April 10, and between 300 and 1,042 arrested; activity diminished considerably by April 11 and Mayor Davis and Police Chief Kelley met young protesters on April 12; in May 1968 Davis established a commission that published findings in August with 17 recommendations to the KCPD, 12 to the KCPS, 9 to other municipal authorities and 5 with no particular target audience. Does not state the race of the six people killed. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  12. UMKC Libraries — “Eight Days in April: The Story of the 1968 Uprising in Kansas City” (digital exhibit) — asserts: the exhibit draws on historical materials from LaBudde Special Collections and the Marr Sound Archives to tell the story of Kansas City, Missouri in the eight days surrounding King’s assassination in April 1968; created in partnership with the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center and Museum and the Prospect Business Association with funding from a $2,020 Missouri Humanities Council grant; the digital collection carries first-hand account interviews, radio broadcasts, news clippings and photographs originally compiled in a 2013 “1968 Riot Collection,” whose biased language Dr. Anthony J. LaBat has since challenged and updated. ↩

  13. Wikipedia — “Leon Jordan.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: Leon Mercer Jordan born May 6, 1905, died July 15, 1970 at age 65; joined the Kansas City Police Department in 1938 and rose to detective; took leave from 1947 and spent eight years training Liberian police, returning February 1952 and becoming the first African American to hold the rank of lieutenant in KCPD history; Liberian President William Tubman awarded him Chevalier of the Order of the African Star in 1948; in 1962 he and Bruce R. Watkins co-founded Freedom, Inc.; in 1964 Freedom Inc. put forward eight candidates and seven won; Jordan served three terms in the Missouri House and was campaigning for a fourth; at approximately 1:00 a.m. on July 15, 1970 he was killed just outside the Green Duck Tavern by three blasts from a Remington 12-gauge shotgun stolen in 1965; three men were arrested, one acquitted and charges dropped against the other two; a 2010 Kansas City Star investigation led police to reopen the cold case but no one was indicted “because all of the alleged perpetrators were deceased by then.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  14. UMKC Libraries — Robert M. Farnsworth, “Leon Jordan Biography” (2015 digital exhibit) — asserts: created by Dr. Robert M. Farnsworth, Professor Emeritus of English at UMKC, drawing on the Leon M. Jordan Collection acquired by LaBudde Special Collections in 2006 and Farnsworth’s research materials; Jordan joined the Kansas City Police Department in 1936 and served sixteen years, five of them on leave leading Liberia’s constabulary; Liberia’s wartime strategic importance to the United States rested on rubber production and trans-Atlantic aviation routes; Jordan co-founded Freedom, Inc. in 1962, “a local organization that promoted voter awareness in the black community and groomed African-American candidates for political office”; he was “gunned down as he closed his Green Duck Tavern” at approximately 1:15 a.m. on July 15, 1970; a second Kansas City Police Department investigation “eventually identified his murderer,” prompting Farnsworth to revise his manuscript. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  15. Wikipedia — “Bruce R. Watkins.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: born March 20, 1924 in Parkville, Missouri; died September 13, 1980 in Kansas City, Missouri (no cause given); first African American elected to Kansas City’s City Council, in 1963; first African American elected to office in the county administration, in 1966; first African American to nearly win election as Kansas City mayor, in April 1979; he and Leon Jordan established Freedom, Inc. in 1962; honoured by the Spirit of Freedom fountain at Brush Creek Boulevard and Cleveland Avenue, the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center at Blue Parkway and Cleveland Avenue, and Bruce R. Watkins Drive (US 71), completed October 22, 2001. Gives no education details and does not describe his role in Freedom Inc. after Jordan’s death. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  16. KCUR 89.3 — “Kansas City, Missouri, Parks Board Votes To Remove J.C. Nichols’ Name From Iconic Fountain And Parkway” (2020-06-30) — asserts: on June 30, 2020 the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted unanimously to remove the J.C. Nichols name from the fountain and to rename the adjacent J.C. Nichols Parkway to its original name, Mill Creek Parkway, after months of community debate and increased awareness of Nichols’s connection to restrictive covenants barring African American and Jewish residents from buying or renting property. ↩ ↩2

  17. Ballotpedia — “Kansas City, Missouri, Question 5, Renaming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. to The Paseo Blvd. Initiative (November 2019).” — asserts: election date November 5, 2019; status Approved; a yes vote favoured renaming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. to The Paseo Blvd. and a no vote favoured keeping the King name; results, officially certified — Yes 31,446 (69.21%), No 13,990 (30.79%); ballot text asked whether to change the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., “approximately 9.98 miles in length from the center line of Lexington Avenue south and east to a point south of the center line of East 85th Street,” back to The Paseo Boulevard; the article carries a section on the January 2019 name change and links the Save the Paseo campaign. ↩

  18. Charles E. Coulter — “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden”: Kansas City’s African American Communities, 1865-1939 (University of Missouri Press, 2006). Internet Archive [Class B — book] — asserts: the standard account of the formation and institutional life of Kansas City’s Black communities in the seven decades preceding the period covered by this page. ↩

  19. Sherry Lamb Schirmer — A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960 (University of Missouri Press, 2002). ISBN 978-0-8262-1391-4. Open Library work record [Class B — book] — asserts: traces how Kansas City’s racial geography — the covenant system, the Troost line and the segregated housing market described above — was produced over the first six decades of the 20th century. ↩

See also

Categories
  • Concept
  • Civil Rights
  • Postwar

On the record — ks.city/wiki/eras/civil-rights-era-kc · last revised 2026-08-05