Freedom Inc.

Freedom Inc. is a Kansas City, Missouri political organization founded in 1962 by Leon M. Jordan and Bruce R. Watkins to register Black voters and elect Black candidates on the city’s east side, becoming one of the most powerful Black political organizations in the Midwest.

Overview

Freedom Inc. (formally Freedom, Incorporated) is a Black political organization based in Kansas City, Missouri. For more than six decades it has mobilized Black voters and shaped municipal, county, state, and federal elections through its endorsement process and street-level get-out-the-vote operation, concentrated in the predominantly Black neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue.¹² Its founders, leon-jordan and bruce-r-watkins, built it during the civil rights era as a vehicle for translating the Black population of Kansas City into Black political representation, and the organization became — and remains — a central gatekeeper for candidates seeking that constituency.²³

Founding (1962)

Freedom Inc. was founded in 1962 (some sources date the founding to 1961) by a group of African American activists including Leon M. Jordan, bruce-r-watkins, Howard Maupin, Charles Moore, and Fred Curls.⁴¹ The 1961-versus-1962 discrepancy appears across reference sources; the organization itself marked its 60th anniversary in 2022, consistent with a 1962 founding date.⁵

Jordan served as the organization’s first chairman and Watkins as co-chairman.⁴ Its stated purpose was to advance political awareness among African Americans through a large-scale voter registration drive and the promotion of Black candidates for public office.³⁴ The strategy was immediately effective. In 1963, Freedom Inc. leaders helped pass a public accommodations ordinance desegregating Kansas City’s public and private facilities — Council Ordinance No. 29153, adopted September 13, 1963, and upheld by public referendum on April 18, 1964.⁶ In 1964, the organization fielded eight candidates for office and won seven of those races; Jordan himself was elected to the first of three terms in the Missouri House of Representatives.³⁴

Leon Jordan + the assassination (1970)

Leon Mercer Jordan (May 6, 1905 – July 15, 1970) was a former Kansas City police detective who had trained police forces in Liberia in the late 1940s and early 1950s before returning to Kansas City, becoming a Democratic ward committeeman, and acquiring the Green Duck Tavern.³ At the time of his death he was described as the most powerful Black politician in Missouri.³

Around 1 a.m. on July 15, 1970, Jordan was killed by three shotgun blasts as he left the Green Duck Tavern, the business he owned at 26th Street and Prospect Avenue.³⁷ Three men were initially arrested; one was acquitted and charges against the other two were dropped, and the case went cold for four decades.³ His widow, Orchid Jordan, succeeded him in the Missouri House and served roughly 16 years.³

In 2010, Kansas City Star reporters preparing coverage for the 40th anniversary of the killing reopened the trail, locating old fingerprint cards and discovering that the murder weapon had been lost by police and later — unknowingly — repurchased and returned to police service.³⁷ The findings prompted the Kansas City Police Department to reopen its oldest cold case. A roughly 900-page police report completed in 2011 concluded that mob boss Nicholas Civella had given his “blessing” to the assassination, and that liquor-store owner Joseph “Shotgun Joe” Centimano had organized the killing as a favor to North End organized-crime interests opposed to Jordan’s political independence.³⁷ No one was ever indicted, because all of the alleged perpetrators were dead by the time the investigation concluded.³⁷

Political influence + role in KC

Freedom Inc. functions primarily as an endorsing organization. Its slate — distributed as a voter guide and worked door-to-door on election day — has long carried decisive weight in races touching the city’s 3rd and 5th Council districts and the broader east-side electorate.¹² Over its history it has been credited with helping elect a long line of Black state representatives, county officials, council members, and members of Congress.⁴²

The organization’s endorsement remains consequential in contemporary Kansas City politics. In the 2023 municipal election it endorsed nine City Council candidates and Mayor Quinton Lucas; Lucas won a second term easily, and seven of the nine endorsed council candidates won their races.¹ Analyses of that cycle found Freedom Inc.’s endorsements among the most predictive of outcomes in Jackson County.¹

Notable figures + officeholders

• leon-jordan — co-founder and first chairman; elected to the Missouri House in 1964, serving three terms until his 1970 assassination.³⁴
• bruce-r-watkins — co-founder and co-chairman; elected to the Kansas City Council in 1963 and, in 1966, the first African American elected to county administrative office in Jackson County; mounted a strong but unsuccessful run for mayor in 1979.⁸
• Alan Wheat — backed by Freedom Inc. in his 1982 election to the U.S. House, becoming the first Black member of Congress to represent a majority-white district in the Kansas City metropolitan area; he won the November 1982 general election with about 58 percent of the vote.⁴⁹
• emanuel-cleaver — a council member from 1979 to 1991 whose career the organization is widely credited with grooming and propelling; elected Kansas City’s first Black mayor in 1991 and later a long-serving member of Congress.⁴¹⁰

Legacy + present day

Freedom Inc. is generally regarded as one of the most successful and durable Black political organizations in the American Midwest, and its founders are memorialized across Kansas City — Watkins through the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center (dedicated 1989), the Spirit of Freedom Fountain, and Bruce R. Watkins Drive (U.S. 71), and Jordan through Leon M. Jordan Memorial Park (dedicated May 17, 1975).⁸⁶

The organization remains active. It continues to publish endorsement slates and voter guides and to run get-out-the-vote operations in Kansas City elections, and in 2024 it rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, framing the move as a continuation of its more-than-60-year record of backing African American leaders.⁵¹¹ Current officers and chairmanship of the organization are not captured here and should be confirmed against the organization’s own materials.

See also

• leon-jordan
• bruce-r-watkins
• emanuel-cleaver
• civil-rights-era-kc
• 18th-and-vine

Sources

Footnotes

1. Flatland KC, “Endorsements Shift Kansas City’s Political Landscape” (2023). https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/endorsements-shift-kansas-citys-political-landscape/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. KCUR, “Who has power now? New elected leaders will decide how Kansas City changes” (June 29, 2023). https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2023-06-29/who-has-power-now-new-elected-leaders-will-decide-how-kansas-city-changes ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Wikipedia, “Leon Jordan” (accessed May 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Jordan ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

4. Wikipedia, “Freedom, Inc.” (accessed May 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom,_Inc. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

5. The Community Voice, “Freedom Inc. Continues 60th Anniversary Celebration With Informative Brunch” (July 29, 2022). https://www.communityvoiceks.com/2022/07/29/freedom-inc-continues-60th-anniversary-celebration-with-informative-brunch/ ↩ ↩²

6. African American Heritage Trail of Kansas City, “Green Duck Tavern” (accessed May 2026). https://aahtkc.org/greenducktavern ↩ ↩²

7. The Missourinet Blog, “Cold case” (Aug. 2, 2010). https://blog.missourinet.com/2010/08/02/cold-case/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. Wikipedia, “Bruce R. Watkins” (accessed May 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_R._Watkins ↩ ↩²

9. U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives, “WHEAT, Alan Dupree” (accessed May 2026). https://history.house.gov/People/Detail?id=23604 ↩

10. Wikipedia, “Emanuel Cleaver” (accessed May 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Cleaver ↩

11. KCTV5, “Historic political organization Freedom Inc. rallies behind Harris campaign” (July 22, 2024). https://www.kctv5.com/2024/07/22/historic-political-organization-freedom-inc-rallies-behind-harris-campaign/ ↩