In January 2019, the Kansas City, Missouri City Council voted 8–4 to rename The Paseo Boulevard — a historic Kessler-Plan thoroughfare running nearly ten miles through the east side — to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. A citizen petition forced the question to a November 2019 citywide ballot; voters overturned the renaming 69%–31%, making it the first successful referendum to reverse an MLK street designation in American history. The episode left Kansas City briefly labeled the largest U.S. city without an MLK-named street, and touched off a two-year search for an alternative. In April 2021 the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board unanimously resolved the matter by renaming Blue Parkway (along with connecting sections of Swope Parkway and Volker Boulevard) to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Background: The Paseo
The Paseo is one of Kansas City’s oldest and most storied thoroughfares. Conceived by landscape architect George Kessler in 1893 as the backbone of the city’s emerging boulevard system, its name was drawn from Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma and its design reflected the City Beautiful movement’s ideal of a landscaped parkway functioning simultaneously as boulevard and linear park. The first phase of construction was completed in 1899 between Admiral Boulevard and 17th Street; land acquisition extended the route over subsequent decades until the full corridor ran roughly ten miles, from Cliff Drive near the Missouri River bluffs south to 85th Street.
The boulevard’s relationship with Black Kansas City is layered and at times contradictory. The Paseo YMCA, completed in 1914 at 19th Street and The Paseo, became one of the most important civic anchors of the Black community during the segregation era — the only facility in the city offering an indoor swimming pool open to African Americans, and the site where, in February 1920, Rube Foster convened eight independent Black team owners to found the Negro National Baseball League. Between the 1950s and 1960s the surrounding neighborhoods shifted rapidly in racial composition, so that by 1969 the corridor was overwhelmingly African American. The Paseo thus carried a dual resonance: as a Kessler-Plan landmark prized by preservationists, and as the backbone of the historic Black east side.
For more on the boulevard’s physical design history, see kessler-plan-and-kc-fountains. For the community context, see civil-rights-era-kc and 18th-and-vine.
The 2019 Renaming
Efforts to place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name on a major Kansas City thoroughfare dated back decades. As of early 2019, KC was widely noted as one of the largest American cities without a primary street bearing King’s name — a distinction cited as an embarrassment by Black civic leaders, civil rights organizations, and longtime advocates including U.S. Representative emanuel-cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor and ordained minister who had pushed for such recognition for years.
On January 24, 2019, the City Council passed Ordinance No. 180828, renaming The Paseo Boulevard to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard by an 8–4 vote. Councilmember (and future Mayor) quinton-lucas sponsored the ordinance, calling it long overdue. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) of Kansas City, which had sustained the advocacy campaign for years, celebrated the decision. Physical street signs were replaced along the corridor.
Council members Scott Wagner, Alissia Canady, Dan Fowler, and Heather Hall voted against the ordinance. Critics of the process noted that Kansas City law ordinarily requires approval from two-thirds of a street’s residents before a name change — a threshold the council waived, proceeding without consulting the roughly 1,800 residents whose addresses were affected. That procedural decision became a rallying point for the opposition.
The Referendum
Within weeks of the January vote, residents began organizing to challenge it. A grassroots group calling itself Save the Paseo — led by historian and lead petitioner Diane Euston, organizer Diane Faelber, and others — described itself as dedicated to preserving the name of one of Kansas City’s first boulevards. The group argued that The Paseo’s 120-year history was itself a form of civic heritage deserving protection. Laura Sanchez, a Latina resident who had lived on The Paseo for eleven years, went door-to-door along the corridor collecting signatures.
In May 2019 Save the Paseo filed a petition with the city containing more than 2,000 signatures; 2,450 were ultimately validated, clearing the required 1,708-signature threshold by 742. The City Council was required to either rescind the renaming or place it before voters.
The question appeared on the November 5, 2019 municipal ballot as Question 5: should the street be renamed back to The Paseo? The campaign drew national coverage. Civil rights leaders argued the referendum was racially motivated and that removing King’s name from a street — any street — represented a retreat from the city’s civil rights commitments. A tense standoff outside a Black church during the campaign received national news attention. freedom-inc, Kansas City’s preeminent Black political organization, was among the groups that campaigned to retain the King name. emanuel-cleaver remained publicly committed to the renaming.
On election night, Question 5 passed by a margin of approximately 69% to 31%, with roughly 31,000 voting yes and 13,900 voting no. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard reverted to The Paseo, barely nine months after the council had acted. The outcome was widely reported as the first successful citizen referendum to reverse an MLK street naming in United States history.
The Aftermath
The vote drew swift national condemnation from civil rights organizations. Kansas City was labeled, often pointedly, as the largest city in the United States without a street named for Martin Luther King Jr. — a designation that stung city officials and Black community leaders alike. Then-Mayor-elect quinton-lucas, who had won the 2019 mayoral race in part on a platform of racial equity, acknowledged the renaming process “could have been handled better” while expressing frustration at the reversal.
The search for an alternative MLK designation proceeded over the following two years. The proposal that ultimately advanced called for renaming a connected route along Brush Creek — Blue Parkway, Swope Parkway, and Volker Boulevard — that would cross the historic Troost Avenue racial divide, linking Kansas City’s east and west sides. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, however, opposed this alignment for various reasons, creating additional community debate before the Parks Board moved forward.
On April 13, 2021, the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to rename Blue Parkway (from Elmwood Avenue to Swope Parkway), Swope Parkway (to Volker Boulevard), and Volker Boulevard (to Brookside Boulevard) as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The designation crossed Troost Avenue, a street long symbolic of Kansas City’s racial geography. With that vote, Kansas City was no longer the largest U.S. city without an MLK-named thoroughfare.
The 2019 saga is frequently paired with the J.C. Nichols Fountain renaming, which unfolded in 2020 amid the national reckoning following George Floyd’s murder and proceeded without a counter-petition or ballot challenge. The contrast between the two episodes — one reversed by voters, one proceeding without organized opposition — illuminates the shifting civic mood across barely twelve months and the particular weight attached to The Paseo’s name among multiple communities.
Long-Term Significance
The Paseo / MLK renaming saga established a national precedent: that a city council decision to name a street for Dr. King could be overturned at the ballot box, and that in at least one major American city, voters chose to do so. For Kansas City’s Black community, the episode was a painful reminder that civic commemoration could be undone by majority vote. For preservation advocates, the retention of The Paseo name was a validation of the principle that historic names carry irreplaceable community meaning. For the city’s political class, the episode underscored the dangers of procedural shortcuts — particularly the decision to waive the two-thirds resident-consent requirement — in decisions with high symbolic stakes.
The saga also accelerated longer-running conversations about how Kansas City honors its Black history in public space, conversations that continued through the civil rights era’s still-unresolved commemorative gaps. The 1968 KC riots and decades of neighborhood displacement along the Troost divide remained part of that backdrop.
Sites Associated with the Saga
- The Paseo Boulevard — the primary corridor, running north-south through east-central KCMO; see also historic-northeast and pendleton-heights
- Paseo YMCA (19th Street and The Paseo) — historic Black community anchor along the boulevard
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — the 2021 resolution route: Blue Parkway / Swope Parkway / Volker Boulevard
Sources
See Also
civil-rights-era-kc, kessler-plan-and-kc-fountains, plaza-fountain-renaming-saga, 1968-kc-riots, freedom-inc, bruce-r-watkins, emanuel-cleaver, quinton-lucas, historic-northeast