Kansas City's (Very Racist) History

I just ran across this video over the weekend. If you'll get past the start of it, with the filmmaker proving himself a hillbilly, I guess, because that Country Club restaurant is just way too fancy for him, it's got good and fair and true information in it.



Not sure it's true?

Worse, you don't agree?

Read on:

Kansas City is among the most 

economically segregated cities in the US

Then, too, there's this from none other than our own University of Missouri-Kansas City.

'Troost Wall' the product of 

Kansas City's long-running racial plight 

We need to be better than this, Kansas City.

We need to be better than this, America.

Link to more information:

Our Divided City - KCPT

You Must Go to the Wornall House

I've lived in the Kansas City area more than 35 years. Heck, I was only born an hour North in St. Joseph but I've lived here for years. And in all that time, I've driven by the old Wornall House on Wornall Road more times than I can count. Heck, I now live in the neighborhood. Again.

So yesterday, I'm driving by, yet again, when I see what are likely Civil War re-enactors on the lawn. It's Saturday. I have my chores done. I decided I have time so I park the car and go.

Am I ever glad I did.

If you have either never been or it's been a long time? Go. Go back. It's a terrific education. The original Wornall family did more to help develop this city and area than you have any idea. And the ties to even JC Nichols and his development of the Plaza, the family ties to Liberty and William Jewell College, local banks, all of it. Fascinating.

Here are just a few of the shots I took, on the outside. This is on the front porch.

A soldier and an officer's tent.

The inside of said tent.

More of the re-enactors.

I'm telling you, you'll get a terrific, fast national education on the Civil War and even the nation, as well as one more on the state of Missouri, the region, the Missouri-Kansas border war, slavery and area, all. Seriously fascinating.

Then, when that's done, either same day or some other time, maybe some other weekend, make a point to go to the Majors house at 82nd and State Line Road. It's under the same non-profit organization and can give you more information and history, at least, if not also entertainment.

Links:

John Wornall House Museum

Majors House - The Alexander Majors House Museum

Home - Wornall Majors House Museums

Kudos and Great Thanks to Steve Kraske

In the last couple of months, at least, if not longer, it seems reporter/interviewer and "man about town" Steve Kraske, of the Kansas City Star and KCUR 89.3 FM radio, has posted and posed more good questions and issues and history of our area than just about anyone.

I think what really first turned my head, so to speak, in his reporting, was when he brought up the issue of whether or not the name of our one very prominent fountain in town, on the Country Club Plaza, the JC Nichols fountain, should keep its name or not, given Mr. Nichols deepset, historical, proven, public  racism.

Kansas City should confront racist past and rename J.C. Nichols fountain

The fact is, it's Mr. Nichols racism that was a huge factor in making us the very divided, very segregated city and metropolitan area that we still are, today. That impacted where people live, where they work, where they go to school and so, obviously, the education they get, the jobs that are possible and finally, how much they earn. Those are huge, huge ramifications and they've reverberated through people's lives and so, through the city, and for decades. It's what has made what and who we are today, personally and as a city and metropolitan area. We know it goes all the way out, across the state line, ito Kansas.

Then, he didn't just ask it once but twice in the Star:

 I’m still talking about J.C. Nichols, racism and renaming the fountain

With Yael Abouhalkah off the staff of our local paper, who else is covering the State of Kansas fiscal debacle like this?

Massive Kansas tax cuts were the result of Gov. Sam Brownback’s lie

Not to be done there, this week, just a couple days ago, he had this one in the Star:

We’re taking down lots of monuments these days. But here’s one we should add

He proposed we should maybe, as a city or state, or both, at least, put up a monument---or two? more?--to the Americans who helped build our nation, innocent Americans, but who were lynched by fellow Americans.

Then, on KCUR, the local NPR station, he followed up that article with this interview and topic:

Death Sentence Changes A Juror's Life, And Understanding America's Legacy Of Lynching

He has singlehandedly done some pretty fantastic writing and interviews and is touching on stories that need to be covered no one else is, I think. He's really having us and helping us examine our history and by doing so, showing us where we are today.

With these examples alone, I can't think of one other person in the metropolitan area, or the region or state, for that matter, that is posing such provocative issues and questions for all the rest of us.

So kudos, Mr. Kraske.  Good on you. Thank you, deeply and sincerely, for getting and keeping the rest of us out here thinking and questioning what we might otherwise not question or think about. And please, do keep up this good and even important work. The only other challenges we seem to get are from the Right Wing and Republicans who seem to want us to be or get or remain selfish and stingy and even racist, lately.

To other reporters and writers and people in the media, you would do well to copy this example.

Please.

Now if only he could get KCPT to include minorities, "people of color" on their "Ruckus" and weekly news programs. And every week, at that. Seems they don't think, down there at our local PBS station, that black and Hispanic people live here or that they have anything to contribute to our city and any possible solutions to issues and problems of the day.

Here's hoping.

The Kansas City Star, KCUR and we all are lucky, very lucky to have him in our midst and reporting and interviewing.

So again, Mr. Kraske. Thank you sincerely. Please don't stop now.

Links:

Up To Date | KCUR

Steve Kraske | KCUR

Up To Date : NPR

UM System President Bullish On Downtown KC Arts Campus And Improving Diversity

Inequality Reshapes Families, KC's Sandlot History, And State Senator Faces Likely Expulsion

The Psychobiology Behind Love (R), And Race Relations Under President Trump

How's This For Irony, Kansas City?

Last evening, there was a local protest against the racism and ugliness and ignorance and even stupidity of the Charlottesville, Virginia protests and murder. There were lots of them, city to city, across the nation.

What was ironic about ours, you might ask?

Stand Against Hate
Sunday 5 PM · JC Nichols Memorial Fountain · Kansas City
Shared to People Power KC

It was held at a public fountain honoring a well-known racist. 

A person significantly, personally, publicly and professionally responsible for the segregation of our city that lasts and still exists and divides us and keeps people down right to today.

Next Up? That Andrew Jackson Statue Downtown

Think about this.

Last weekend, writer, reporter Steve Kraske, of the Kansas City Star and KCUR, the local NPR station, penned an article in the Saturday paper calling for the renaming of the J.C. Nichols fountain on our own Country Club Plaza because, well, the fact is, Mr. Nichols was a blatant, very public racist.

And sure, there are and will be plenty in the city who think it's crazy and/or unnecessary and/or just out and out stupid.

But the fact is, the City Council is meeting today and talking about doing just that.

On another local blog today I saw a comment and it made me realize what's next.

Yeah, that Andrew Jackson statue downtown? The one in front of the County Courthouse?

It will be next up for evaluation.

You want racist? It just doesn't get any more racist than US President Andrew Jackson.

Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst US Presidents 

And it's not just that he was racist, though that's bad enough. He's been listed as one of the nation's worst presidents for years and for a range of reasons. Here are links to just three articles, of many, many that are available, spelling out how awful he was.

The 5 most notorious presidents in US history

Andrew Jackson was America's worst 

'great' president 

5 Reasons We Should Kick Andrew Jackson 

Off the $20 Bill 

Here is just a bit for which he's known.

When Jackson was inaugurated, he held a party in the White House to which anyone was invited. People trashed the place, even snipping bits out of the curtains as souvenirs. This story confirmed all the worst fears of Jackson’s critics. His predecessor, John Quincy Adams, who Jackson had defeated in a horrifically bad-tempered election, was so horrified by Jackson’s triumph that he refused to attend the inauguration – the last outgoing president in history to have boycotted his successor’s big day. Men like Adams – who came from a Massachusetts family that had fought for Independence and feared for the survival of the republic (particularly his father, John Adams) – saw Jackson as a profane, unprincipled demagogue; a would-be tyrant in the Napoleonic mode; a man with no respect for the checks and balances of the Constitution or the rule of law.

The first president to have risen from lowly origins, Jackson became famous as the general who had defeated the British at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. Previously known for buying a slave plantation in Tennessee (in 1803) and for taking part in a high-profile duel (with Charles Dickinson in 1806), after the battle of New Orleans he went on to win more fame fighting the Seminole Indians.

In office, Jackson was an aggressive wielder of the president’s hitherto unused veto power. He stopped Congress from spending money on new roads or canals, and he prevented the re-charter of the Bank of the United States, which had attempted to regulate the money supply and served as a lender of last resort. And whatever political challenge he faced, his language was hyperbolic. “You are a den of vipers and thieves,” he wrote to the directors of the Bank of the US, “I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out”. When he left office, the country was plunged into the deepest recession anyone could remember.

So, yes, Steve Kraske's idea and proposal struck a lot of people unawares but with all the removal of statues of racists first in New Orleans, then in St. Louis and the national conversations its inspired, I would absolutely look for this one to come up, too, shortly.

Like it, agree with it or no.

Steve Kraske and the Really Excellent Proposal

They printed it yesterday.

Steve Kraske: Kansas City should confront racist past and rename J.C. Nichols fountain

Nichols was all about enduring legacies.

He was about something else, too. Like others of his time, he was a racist who went to great lengths to ensure that racial and religious minorities could not live in his neighborhoods. Nichols championed restrictive deeds that dictated the types of people who could move in.

Our own UMKC points this out very well---and we all know it.

'Troost Wall' the product of Kansas City's 

long-running racial plight

And sure, the Federal Government had their hand in it, as we also know, but that doesn't make it right, either. Here's a great bit of local background from way over in the UK with their BBC.

Why don't black and white Americans 

live together?

The US government had a hand in creating this segregation due to practices it instituted back in the 1930s, which prevented many blacks from getting on the property ladder in certain areas.

When the federal government began underwriting home loans for Americans to help boost the economy as part of the New Deal, strict guidelines were drawn up regarding where mortgages could be issued.

Areas where minorities lived were seen as risky investments and black families were routinely denied mortgages, locking them out of the housing market.

The practice was known as redlining because red ink marked out the minority areas. As Kansas City-based historian Bill Worley explained to me, these policies continued right into the 1960s, and excluded African Americans from one of the greatest motors of wealth in the 20th Century - home ownership.

And here's why all this history, from "way back when" is still pertinent and important today. In the first place, it's not that long ago and second, its effects still permeate the city, to this day:

Redlining is now theoretically outlawed in the United States, and has been since the 1970s, but it's still happening to this day.

"Banks continue to build and structure their lending operations in a way that avoids or fails to meaningfully serve communities of colour, based on assumptions about the financial risk," Vanita Gupta, the justice department's top civil rights lawyer, said last September, as she pledged more action to stop discriminatory lending.

Another factor which made access to housing prohibitive were the restrictive racial covenants written into housing contracts.

Until 1948, it was perfectly legal for a black person to be prevented from buying or living in a house.

Here's where the JC Nichols part comes in.

Bill Worley showed me an example of a restrictive racial covenant drawn up in Kansas City by the city's best known property developer during that time, JC Nichols.

"None of the said lots shall be conveyed to, used, owned nor occupied by Negroes as owner or tenants," it read. Other groups, including Jews, were also written into these kind of contracts.

So not only was JC Nichols racist, provenly, but he was racist against not just Blacks, not just one race, but two.

It can't be emphasized enough why this is still resonant today.

Kansas City is fifth most economically segregated 

city in U.S.

White people don't want to recognize this, first, let alone accept it and then, what few do think it only has to do with where one lives. That's not it at all. This, then, where you live effects where you work, how much your paid, what schools your children go to, everything. It very directly effects what your family will earn, in wages, where, again, you work, what and how you learn at school, who you socialize with, everything. It's not just housing, no way, though that's bad enough.

Check out these statistics on Kansas City.

The 9 Most Segregated Cities In America

>Pct. of population living in segregated areas: 37.8%
> Black poverty rate: 26.4%
> White poverty rate: 8.3%
> Black unemployment rate: 13.4%
> White unemployment rate: 5.6% 

Roughly 765,000 Kansas City residents — or 37.8% of the city’s population — live in a homogeneous zip code, or where at least 80% of residents share the same skin color or ethnicity, the ninth highest proportion in the country. Out of the 166 zip codes that make up the Kansas City metro area, 123 are home to predominantly white residents. White city residents have very little interaction with the city’s black residents. Of all the people a white person comes into contact with in the area, only 5.5% are black, significantly less frequent than the similar figure of 12.8% of contacts across the 50 largest metro areas. Segregation like this can have very discernible consequences. White households earn nearly twice the median income of black households. Three of the area’s zip codes are home to 15.9% of the metro’s black population, and the median household income in each is less than $30,000 annually. More than 26% of the metro area’s black population lives in poverty, slightly less than the national poverty rate among black Americans but more than three times as high as the poverty rate among the city’s white residents of 8.3%. School systems are also affected by segregation. While one-third of all metro area residents have at least a bachelor’s degree, in zip codes that are home to predominantly black residents, less than 12% of adults have a college degree. Read more at 24/7 Wall St.

Here, briefly, why segregation is so very, deeply wrong and why we still, to this day, need to recognize and

Everyone Pays A Hefty Price 

For Segregation, Study Says

Racial segregation in schools 

holds white pupils back

U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal 

Why Well-Being for Each of Us 

is Well-Being for All of Us

I have to say, I salute, again, Steve Kraske for writing and our own Kansas City Star for putting out such an article. In the first place, it surprised me. Usually the media and people in it like and want to go the safe, quiet route. 

This is not doing that at all. 

Instead of just asking the question of if we should do this, too, Mr. Kraske puts it right out there, that we should definitely, unequivocally rename our revered fountain.

So kudos, Mr. Kraske and the Star. Now, let the conversations commence.

Please check your racism at the door. (Along with your ignorance of the city's history. And any and all ugliness and hate).

Link:

How Troost Became A Major Divide In Kansas City | KCUR

How School And District Boundaries Shaped Education In Kansas City

The Plaza, then and now

Our own Country Club Plaza, same building, 1966 and today:

If only the JC Company had, all those years ago, had the wisdom to know they should mandate that all buildings maintain their original Spanish style architecture on the outside.

The properties would all look FAR better now and all this time, from its creation to now, it would maintain the look throughout the Plaza--wouldn't that make sense?--and the property values would unequivocally be even higher than they are now I think it can easily be argued.

So it goes.

Old JC Nichols had brilliant ideas for himself, his company, his buildings and the city but he missed out on this one.

_________________________________________________________
Thanks to Michael Signorelli and the Things and places we loved in Greater KC when we were much younger! page from Facebook, yesterday.

In case you'd care to help fight the new Polsinelli building on the Plaza

This entry is for just that--in case you want to help fight the new Polsinelli building proposed for the Plaza. If you're on Facebook (come on, admit it, you are), search for this group: Save the Plaza 2010 Then join, of course. They're having an organizational meeting this Friday evening at 5:30 pm, you'll find. You can also reach them at their email address savethe Plaza@yahoo.com. You are recommended to attend the rezoning hearing on oct. 5 at 12:30 at City Hall, too, if you can. Finally, if you can, listen in today on KCUR 89.3 FM, 11am as Steve Kraske will be talking with Kansas City Star development reporter Kevin Collison, Polsinelli Shughart chairman and chief executive W. Russell Welsh, Historic Kansas City Foundation president Scott Lane and others about the proposed project and why it's creating so much controversy. Side note: I'll bet the Polsinelli people are regretting now that they are immediately known as "The Law Firm That Wants to Tear Down Part of the Historic Country Club Plaza, Only to Build a New, Irrelevant, Contemporary Structure." Just bad PR, all the way around, huh? Too bad. Here's hoping. Have a great week, y'all.