JoCoLibrary - Race Reads - Local Interest | Johnson County Library

Banking, Insurance & Financial Institutions

by Mayor's Task Force on Race Relations (Kansas City, Mo.)

Book - 1997

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Housing/neighborhood and Economic Development Cluster

by Mayor's Task Force on Race Relations (Kansas City, Mo.)

Book - 1997

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Religion/spirituality Cluster

by Mayor's Task Force on Race Relations (Kansas City, Mo.)

Book - 1997?

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Kansas City

by Gillis, Delia C.

Book - 2007

Since 1803, when York, a slave in the Lewis and Clark expedition, stood on the bluffs overlooking Kansas City, African Americans have contributed to the c...Show more Since 1803, when York, a slave in the Lewis and Clark expedition, stood on the bluffs overlooking Kansas City, African Americans have contributed to the city's rich history. Men and women like Tom Bass, Emily Fisher, Sam Sheperd, and Hiram Young built the region in slavery and in freedom. Musicians such as Julie Lee, Bennie Moten, Joe Turner, and Count Basie turned Kansas City into a jazz mecca in the 1920s and '30s. The professional class made their voice heard with the establishment of the Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, the Kansas City Call newspaper, and election of the city's first black mayor, Emanuel Cleaver. With over 200 vintage images, Kansas City recreates this beautiful mosaic of African-American community. Show less

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A City Divided

The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960

by Schirmer, Sherry Lamb

Book - 2002

A City Divided traces the development of white Kansas Citians' perceptions of race and examines the ways in which those perceptions shaped both the physic...Show more A City Divided traces the development of white Kansas Citians' perceptions of race and examines the ways in which those perceptions shaped both the physical landscape of the city and the manner in which Kansas City was policed and governed. Because of rapid changes in land use and difficulties in suppressing crime and vice in Kansas City, the control of urban spaces became an acute concern, particularly for the white middle class, before race became a problematic issue in Kansas City. As the African American population grew in size and assertiveness, whites increasingly identified blacks with those factors that most deprived a given space of its middle-class character. Consequently, African Americans came to represent the antithesis of middle-class values, and the white middle class established its identity by excluding blacks from the urban spaces it occupied. By 1930, racial discrimination rested firmly on gender and family values as well as class. Inequitable law enforcement in the ghetto increased criminal activity, both real and perceived, within the African American community. White Kansas Citians maintained this system of racial exclusion and denigration in part by "misdirection," either by denying that exclusion existed or by claiming that segregation was necessary to prevent racial violence. Consequently, African American organizations sought to counter misdirection tactics. The most effective of these efforts followed World War II, when local black activists devised demonstration strategies that targeted misdirection specifically. At the same time, a new perception emerged among white liberals about the role of race in shaping society. Whites in the local civil rights movement acted upon the belief that integration would produce a better society by transforming human character. Successful in laying the foundation for desegregating public accommodations in Kansas City, black and white activists nonetheless failed to dismantle the systems of spatial exclusion and inequitable law enforcement or to eradicate the racial ideologies that underlay those systems. These racial perceptions continue to shape race relations in Kansas City and elsewhere. This study demystifies these perceptions by exploring their historical context. While there have been many studies of the emergence of ghettos in northern and border cities, and others of race, gender, segregation, and the origins of white ideologies, A City Divided is the first to address these topics in the context of a dynamic, urban society in the Midwest. Show less

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Nicodemus

Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas

by Hinger, Charlotte

Book - 2016

Pushed out of the South as Reconstruction ended and as white landowners, employers, and "Redeemer" governments sought to reestablish the constra...Show more Pushed out of the South as Reconstruction ended and as white landowners, employers, and "Redeemer" governments sought to reestablish the constraints of slavery, thousands of African Americans migrated west in search of better opportunities. As the first well-known all-black community on the plains, Nicodemus, Kansas, became a national exemplar of black self-improvement. But Nicodemus also embodied many of the problems facing African Americans during this time. Diverging philosophies within the community, Charlotte Hinger argues, foretold the differences that continue to divide black politicians and intellectuals today. Nicodemus was a microcosm of all the issues facing black Americans in the late nineteenth century, and Hall, McCabe, and Niles are archetypes for powerful philosophies that have persisted into the twenty-first century. This study of their ideas and the ways they shaped Nicodemus offers a novel perspective on the most famous post-Civil War African American community in the West. Show less

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Some of My Best Friends Are Black

The Strange Story of Integration in America

by Colby, Tanner

Book - 2012

Chronicles America's troubling relationship with race through four interrelated stories: the transformation of a once-racist Birmingham school system; a K...Show more Chronicles America's troubling relationship with race through four interrelated stories: the transformation of a once-racist Birmingham school system; a Kansas City neighborhood's fight against housing discrimination; the curious racial divide of the Madison Avenue ad world; and a Louisiana Catholic parish's forty-year effort to build an integrated church. Show less

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This Is Not Dixie

Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927

by Campney, Brent M. S.

Book - 2015

Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of...Show more Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post "Civil War Kansas." Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence--property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns--used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats. African Americans spontaneously hid fugitives and defused lynch mobs while using newspapers and civil rights groups to lay the groundwork for forms of institutionalized opposition that could fight racist violence through the courts and via public opinion. Ambitious and provocative, This Is Not Dixie rewrites fundamental narratives on mob action, race relations, African American resistance, and racism's grim past in the heartland. Show less

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Racism in Kansas City

A Short History

by Griffin, G. S.

Book - 2015

Kansas Citians, like so many others across the nation, wonder, "Could it happen here?" The answer lies in this study of Kansas City's darkest mo...Show more Kansas Citians, like so many others across the nation, wonder, "Could it happen here?" The answer lies in this study of Kansas City's darkest moments-slavery, the border war, the Civil War, bombings of black homes, lynchings, the segregation of neighborhoods and schools, the civil rights struggle, the Black Panther movement, the 1968 race riot, assassinations in the 1970s, the infamous Missouri v. Jenkins U.S. Supreme Court case, and the racial inequities that still plague Kansas City today. Threaded throughout Racism in Kansas City are stories of those who fought ardently against racist policies . . . and won. Show less

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Slavery on the Periphery

The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras

by Epps, Kristen

Book - 2018

Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the earliest years of American s...Show more Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War along this critical geographical, political, and social fault line. Show less

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Well-intentioned Whiteness

Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City

by Kolavalli, Chhaya

Book - 2023

This book documents how whiteness can take up space in US cities and policies through well-intentioned progressive policy agendas that support green urban...Show more This book documents how whiteness can take up space in US cities and policies through well-intentioned progressive policy agendas that support green urbanism. Through in-depth ethnographic research in Kansas City, I explore how urban food projects-a key pillar of the city's green urban policy agenda-are conceived, implemented, and how they are perceived by residents of 'food deserts,' those intended to benefit from these projects. In doing so, I examine the narratives and histories that mostly white local food advocates are guided by, and I uplift an alternative urban history of Kansas City-one that centers the contributions of Black and brown residents to urban prosperity, and highlights how displacement of communities of color, through green development, has historically been a key urban development strategy in the city. This book highlights how myopic focus on green urbanism, as a solution to myriad urban 'problems,' ends up reinforcing racial inequity, and uplifting structural whiteness. Whiteness is now oft-publicly discussed in the U.S. This makes fine-grained analysis of how whiteness takes up space in our cities even more important. I examine this process intimately, and in doing so, flesh out our understanding of how racial inequities can be (re)created by everyday urban actors. Show less

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The Ku Klux Klan in Kansas City, Kansas

by Rives, Tim

Book - 2019

The Ku Klux Klan kicked off a nationwide revival in 1921 and took Kansas City, Kansas, by storm. The majority white population--alarmed by the influx of i...Show more The Ku Klux Klan kicked off a nationwide revival in 1921 and took Kansas City, Kansas, by storm. The majority white population--alarmed by the influx of immigrants, Catholics and Jews--joined the Klan in thousands. The Klan held picnics drawing crowds of twenty-five thousand and parades up Minnesota Avenue with thousands of Klansmen, electric lights and robed horses. They also intimidated African Americans, vandalized Catholic cemeteries and censored "offensive" books from public library shelves. Its members fed a political machine, electing more than one hundred Klansmen to local offices, from district attorney to mayor. Author Tim Rives shares this troubled and little-known story, where the men of the Klan's inner circle ruled the city for nearly thirty years. Show less

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J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City

Innovation in Planned Residential Communities

by Worley, William S.

Book - 1990

Born and reared on the outskirts of Kansas City in Olathe, Kansas, Jesse Clyde Nichols (1880-1950) was a creative genius in land development. He grew up w...Show more Born and reared on the outskirts of Kansas City in Olathe, Kansas, Jesse Clyde Nichols (1880-1950) was a creative genius in land development. He grew up witnessing the cycles of development and decline characteristics of Kansas City and other American cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These early memories contributed to his interest in real estate and led him to pursue his goal of neighborhoods in Kansas City, an idea unfamiliar to that city and a rarity across the United States. J.C. Nichols was one of the first developers in the country to lure buyers with a combination of such attractions as paved streets, sidewalks, landscaped areas, and access to water and sewers. He also initiated restrictive covenants and to control the use of structures built in and around his neighborhoods. In addition, Nichols was involved in the placement of services such as schools, churches, and recreation and shopping areas, all of which were essential to the success of his developments. In 1923, Nichols and his company developed the Country Club Plaza, the first of many regional shopping centers built in anticipation of the increased use of automobiles. Known throughout the United States, the Plaza is a lasting tribute to the creativity of J.C. Nichols and his legacy to the United States. With single-mindedness of purpose and unwavering devotion to achievement, J.C. Nichols left an indelible imprint on the Kansas City metropolitan area, and thereby influenced the design and development of major residential and commercial areas throughout the United States as well. Based on extensive research, J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City is a valuable study of one of the most influential entrepreneurs in American land development. Show less

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Anchored in Bias

Fired Over "white Tears" A Journalist's Mission to Challenge the System

by Benson, Lisa

Book - 2020

In this timely book, journalist Lisa Benson shares her journey from the newsroom to the courtroom in her fight for justice at a local television station. ...Show more In this timely book, journalist Lisa Benson shares her journey from the newsroom to the courtroom in her fight for justice at a local television station. Lisa made national news when her twenty-year career as a news reporter / anchor ended abruptly after she shared an article on her personal Facebook page entitled, "How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Avoid Accountability" written by fellow journalist Ruby Hamad-an article that offended two of her white female coworkers, which ultimately got her fired. In this book, courtroom testimony, along with exhibits, prove that the employer expected to support Lisa's career goals only wanted to harness and control her labor while silencing her voice. Guilty of racial ignorance, Lisa foolishly believed that if she worked hard, played by the rules, and people liked her, she could avoid the racial pitfalls that swallowed the dreams of her forefathers and condemned others to a life of criminalization, poverty, and shame. Show less

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Complex Justice

The Case of Missouri V. Jenkins

by Dunn, Joshua M.

Book - 2008

In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white s...Show more In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Yet even after increasing employee salaries and constructing elaborate facilities at a cost of more than $2 billion, the district remained overwhelmingly segregated and student achievement remained far below national averages. Just eight years later the U.S. Supreme Court began reversing these initiatives, signifying a major retreat from Brown v. Board of Education . In Kansas City, African American families opposed to the district court's efforts organized a takeover of the school board and requested that the court case be closed. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clark's ruling was not the result of tyrannical "judicial activism" but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions, Dunn explains, necessarily limit the policy choices available to lower court judges, introducing complications the Supreme Court would not anticipate. He demonstrates that the Kansas City case is a model lesson for the types of problems that develop for lower courts in any area in which the Supreme Court attempts to create significant change. Dunn's exploration of this landmark case deepens our understanding of when courts can and cannot successfully create and manage public policy. Show less

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Summoned at Midnight

A Story of Race and the Last Military Executions at Fort Leavenworth

by Serrano, Richard A

Book - 2019

In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was at last gaining ground, 16 soldiers sat confined in basement cells on death row in the arm...Show more In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was at last gaining ground, 16 soldiers sat confined in basement cells on death row in the army's Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison in Kansas. Exactly eight were white and eight were black. All of the white soldiers were commuted. Not only were their lives spared, but they all were eventually released and returned to their families. They benefited from powerful Washington powerbrokers, including the Eisenhower administration and Congress, high-priced, specialized lawyers and a groundswell of public support. Only black soldiers were hung. They were summoned at midnight to a wooden gallows and dropped to their deaths. They enjoyed no Washington support, could not afford expensive lawyers and had little public backing. Their casefiles are meager - often containing a desperate, misspelled letter from a mother pleading for her son's life. Then in early 1961 a final case reached the Oval Office in Washington. President John Kennedy, a Democrat, a liberal, and a Catholic, a leader strong on Civil Rights, was still in his First Hundred Days when confronted with whether to spare army Private John A. Bennett. Unlike all the other condemned men, white and black, Bennett was not a murderer. He had killed no one. Instead he was sentenced to die for raping a white girl. But like the other men soldiers who were hung, Bennett was black. Were he to die, he would become the last soldier executed by the army, the last in nearly 60 years. Show less

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Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development

The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2010

by Gotham, Kevin Fox

Book - 2014

More than a century of racist policy, lending practices, restrictive covenants, and "gentleman's agreements" ensured that Kansas City developed ...Show more More than a century of racist policy, lending practices, restrictive covenants, and "gentleman's agreements" ensured that Kansas City developed as and remains a metropolis heavily segregated by race. Find out why east side vs. west side matters in Kansas City. Show less

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Continuum

Native North American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

by Torrence, Gaylord

Book - 2020

This landmark publication brings North American Indigenous art to the fore with the presentation of 280 objects from the culturally and aesthetically rich...Show more This landmark publication brings North American Indigenous art to the fore with the presentation of 280 objects from the culturally and aesthetically rich collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. More than two-thirds of the volume's featured works--paintings, sculptures, drawings, regalia, ceramics, textiles, and baskets--have never before appeared in publication. These profound artistic achievements represent the traditions of Native cultures across the US and Canada in a continuum of visual expression from pre-encounter to the present. W. Richard West, Jr., President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West and Founding Director and Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, opens the book with a compelling essay contrasting Western and Indigenous understandings of Native art. In a second essay, Curator of American Art Stephanie Fox Knappe contextualizes the voices of twenty-two contemporary artists. Full-page detail images of the artist's works are included. The inspired vision underlying the collection and this publication is articulated by Curator of Native American Art Gaylord Torrence, who traces the evolution of the Nelson-Atkins holdings and their significant expansion since 2001. He also provides an overview of the traditions of seven geographical regions and offers a framework for engaging with these remarkable works. New voices, fresh perspectives, and masterworks certain to find their place in the canon of Native American art history combine in an enlightening and important survey. Show less

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The Darkest Period

The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846-1873

by Parks, Ronald D.

Book - 2014

Before their relocation to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, the Kanza Indians spent twenty-seven years on a reservation near Council Grove, K...Show more Before their relocation to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, the Kanza Indians spent twenty-seven years on a reservation near Council Grove, Kansas, on the Santa Fe Trail. In The Darkest Period , Ronald D. Parks tells the story of those years of decline in Kanza history following the loss of the tribe?s original homeland in northeastern and central Kansas. Parks makes use of accounts by agents, missionaries, journalists, and ethnographers in crafting this tale. He addresses both the big picture?the effects of Manifest Destiny?and local particulars such as the devastating impact on the tribe of the Santa Fe Trail. The result is a story of human beings rather than historical abstractions. The Kanzas confronted powerful Euro-American forces during their last years in Kansas. Government officials and their policies, Protestant educators, predatory economic interests, and a host of continent-wide events affected the tribe profoundly. As Anglo-Americans invaded the Kanza homeland, the prairie was plowed and game disappeared. The Kanzas? holy sites were desecrated and the tribe was increasingly confined to the reservation. During this ?darkest period,? as chief Allegawaho called it in 1871, the Kanzas? Neosho reservation population diminished by more than 60 percent. As one survivor put it, ?They died of a broken heart, they died of a broken spirit.? But despite this adversity, as Parks?s narrative portrays, the Kanza people continued their relationship with the land?its weather, plants, animals, water, and landforms. Parks does not reduce the Kanzas? story to one of hapless Indian victims traduced by the American government. For, while encroachment, disease, and environmental deterioration exerted enormous pressure on tribal cohesion, the Kanzas persisted in their struggle to exercise political autonomy while maintaining traditional social customs up to the time of removal in 1873 and beyond. Show less

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The 116

The True Story of Abraham Lincoln's Lost Guard

by Muehlberger, James P.

Book - 2015

This book is an account of the Frontier Guards who defended President Lincoln from a kidnapping and assassination plot in the opening days of the Civil Wa...Show more This book is an account of the Frontier Guards who defended President Lincoln from a kidnapping and assassination plot in the opening days of the Civil War. It looks into the lives of these 116 men and their leader, the Kansas "free state" advocate and lawyer, James Henry Lane. It is a portrait of the free-state and pro-slavery forces that tore Missouri and the Kansas Territory apart in the 1850s. It describes the battles pertaining to the protection and abolition of slavery that riled Congress on both a federal and state level, eventually leading to war in 1861. Show less

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Bleeding Borders

Race, Gender, and Violence in Pre-Civil War Kansas

by Oertel, Kristen Tegtmeier

Book - 2009

In Bleeding Borders, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel offers a fresh, multifaceted interpretation of the quintessential sectional conflict in pre--Civil War Kansa...Show more In Bleeding Borders, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel offers a fresh, multifaceted interpretation of the quintessential sectional conflict in pre--Civil War Kansas. Instead of focusing on the white, male politicians and settlers who vied for control of the Kansas territorial legislature, Oertel explores the crucial roles Native Americans, African Americans, and white women played in the literal and rhetorical battle between proslavery and antislavery settlers in the region. She brings attention to the local debates and the diverse peoples who participated in them during that contentious period. Moving beyond a conventional political history of Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Borders breaks new ground by revealing how the struggles of this highly diverse region contributed to the national move toward disunion and how the ideologies that governed race and gender relations were challenged as North, South, and West converged on the border between slavery and freedom. Show less

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Bleeding Kansas

Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era

by Etcheson, Nicole

Book - 2004

Few people would have expected bloodshed in Kansas Territory. After all, it had few slaves and showed few signs that slavery would even flourish. But civi...Show more Few people would have expected bloodshed in Kansas Territory. After all, it had few slaves and showed few signs that slavery would even flourish. But civil war tore this territory apart in the 1850s and 60s, and "Bleeding Kansas" became a forbidding symbol for the nationwide clash over slavery that followed. Many free-state Kansans seemed to care little about slaves, and many proslavery Kansans owned not a single slave. But the failed promise of the Kansas-Nebraska Act-when fraud in local elections subverted the settlers' right to choose whether Kansas would be a slave or free state-fanned the flames of war. While other writers have cited slavery or economics as the cause of unrest, Nicole Etcheson seeks to revise our understanding of this era by focusing on whites' concerns over their political liberties. The first comprehensive account of "Bleeding Kansas" in more than thirty years, her study re-examines the debate over slavery expansion to emphasize issues of popular sovereignty rather than slavery's moral or economic dimensions. The free-state movement was a coalition of settlers who favored black rights and others who wanted the territory only for whites, but all were united by the conviction that their political rights were violated by nonresident voting and by Democratic presidents' heavy-handed administration of the territories. Etcheson argues that participants on both sides of the Kansas conflict believed they fought to preserve the liberties secured by the American Revolution and that violence erupted because each side feared the loss of meaningful self-governance. Bleeding Kansas is a gripping account of events and people-rabble-rousing Jim Lane, zealot John Brown, Sheriff Sam Jones, and others-that examines the social milieu of the settlers along with the political ideas they developed. Covering the period from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act to the 1879 Exoduster Migration, it traces the complex interactions among groups inside and outside the territory, creating a comprehensive political, social, and intellectual history of this tumultuous period in the state's history. As Etcheson demonstrates, the struggle over the political liberties of whites may have heightened the turmoil but led eventually to a broadening of the definition of freedom to include blacks. Her insightful re-examination sheds new light on this era and is essential reading for anyone interested in the ideological origins of the Civil War. Show less

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On Slavery's Border

Missouri's Small-slaveholding Households, 1815-1865

by Burke, Diane Mutti

Book - 2010

On Slavery's Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding ent...Show more On Slavery's Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding enterprise. Mutti Burke argues that economic and social factors gave Missouri slavery an especially intimate quality. Owners directly oversaw their slaves and lived in close proximity with them, sometimes in the same building. White Missourians believed this made for a milder version of bondage. Some slaves, who expressed fear of being sold further south, seemed to agree. Mutti Burke reveals, however, that while small slaveholding created some advantages for slaves, it also made them more vulnerable to abuse and interference in their personal lives. In a region with easy access to the free states, the perception that slavery was threatened spawned white anxiety, which frequently led to violent reassertions of supremacy. Show less

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Kansas City's Montgall Avenue

Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home

by Carr, Margie

Book - 2023

A few blocks southeast of the famed intersection of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri, just a stone's throw from Charlie Parker's old stomping ground...Show more A few blocks southeast of the famed intersection of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri, just a stone's throw from Charlie Parker's old stomping grounds and the current home of the vaunted American Jazz Museum and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, sits Montgall Avenue. This single block was home to some of the most important and influential leaders the city has ever known. Margie Carr's Kansas City's Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home is the extraordinary, century-old history of one city block whose residents shaped the changing status of Black people in Kansas City and built the social and economic institutions that supported the city's Black community during the first half of the twentieth century. The community included, among others, Chester Franklin, founder of the city's Black newspaper, The Call; Lucile Bluford, a University of Kansas alumna who worked at The Call for 69 years; and Dr. John Edward Perry, founder of Wheatley-Provident Hospital, Kansas City's first hospital for Black people. The principal and four teachers from Lincoln High School, Kanas City's only high school for African American students, also lived on the block. While introducing the reader to the remarkable individuals living on Montgall Avenue, Carr also uses this neighborhood as a microcosm of the changing nature of discrimination in twentieth-century America. The city's white leadership had little interest in supporting the Black community and instead used its resources to separate and isolate them. The state of Missouri enforced segregation statues until the 1960s and the federal government created housing policies that erased any assets Black homeowners accumulated, robbing them of their ability to transfer that wealth to the next generation. Today, the 2400 block of Montgall Avenue is situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Kansas City. The attitudes and policies that contributed to the neighborhood's changing environment paint a more complete--and disturbing--picture of the role that race in continues to play in America's story. Show less

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Take up the Black Man's Burden

Kansas City's African American Communities, 1865-1939

by Coulter, Charles E.

Book - 2006

Examines the people and institutions that shaped Kansas City's Black communities from the end of the Civil War until the outbreak of World War II, blendin...Show more Examines the people and institutions that shaped Kansas City's Black communities from the end of the Civil War until the outbreak of World War II, blending rich historical research with first-person accounts that allow participants in this historical drama to tell their own stories of struggle and accomplishment. Show less

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