Jackson County
(Mo.) Historical Society
Portals to the Past by David W. Jackson
Westport
Steptoe neighborhood stepping into history
Taking Steps to Record Steptoe, Westport’s Vanishing African American Neighborhood Kansas
City’s newest fire station in Westport on 43rd Street faces a pre
Civil War-era enclave called “Steptoe,” an historically village-like,
segregated, African American community. As land uses in this neighborhood
continue to evolve, Steptoe as a residential neighborhood is one “step” from
extinction prompting the dire need to study, preserve, and commemorate this
Kansas City original. Jackson County slave owners
include Westport founder John Calvin McCoy and John B. Wornall, a banker and
gentleman farmer, who built the antebellum home operated today as The John
Wornall House Museum (6115 Wornall Road). They may have traded slaves at
auction in the oldest building in Kansas City . . . the Albert G. Boone store
(today Kelly’s Westport Inn) at the northwest corner of Westport Road and
Pennsylvania Street. Remarkably though, McCoy established a way for slaves in
Westport to become freedmen; that is they could work to buy their freedom.
That land was also set-aside for freedmen to own makes this story doubly
unique. According to ongoing research
by local historian JoeLouis Mattox--who desires to bring Steptoe’s legacy to
the forefront--Steptoe’s origins date to at least 1857 when Henry Clay Pate,
publisher of the Border Star newspaper, and Postmaster of Westport,
paid $3,900 for a pasture outside Westport’s southern boundary. “Pate’s
Addition to the Town of Westport,” included three east-west streets named:
Pate, Clay, and Steptoe (43rd Terrace today) that were bounded by
Broadway on the east and Summit on the west. Like many other Kansas City
streets, the name “Steptoe” was once spelled out in blue and white ceramic
tiles in the pavement at each corner. Eventually, the
African-American population in Pate’s Addition grew. Penn School (formerly
located at 4237 Pennsylvania), founded in 1868, was the first school west of
the Mississippi established for the expressed purpose of educating black
children. The Saint Luke African American Methodist Episcopal (AME) church
was organized in 1879. Another neighborhood church, St. James Baptist Church
located at 508 Pennsylvania organized around 1883 and services are still
being held there today. The tiny, segregated hamlet became
a collection of neat clapboard houses tucked along narrow streets. Many
residents became chauffeurs, maids or cooks who worked in white neighborhoods
surrounding Steptoe, but there were also railroad porters and cooks,
plumbers, gardeners, and other professionals. Though there were
segregationist attitudes, there was little racial tension. Long time
residents called their community “a little island” and talk about having
white, Jewish, German, Italian, Hispanic, and Swedish people for neighbors,
declaring it “the best colored neighborhood in the city.” Times continue to change,
overall for the better, though progress doesn’t always feel good. The Steptoe
neighborhood will soon sidestep into history as longtime residents dwindle.
Mattox’s plea for to garner financial support to permanently record personal
stories from people whose families are connected to the Steptoe area is an
urgent and worthy cause. Will you step up and help ensure future generations
may have access to first-hand accounts of a truly unique, but vanishing
Kansas City neighborhood? David W. Jackson is archivist
for the nonprofit, membership supported Jackson County (Mo.) Historical
Society's Archives and Research Library at 112 W Lexington Ave, Suite
103, Independence, MO 64050. The Society collects donations and makes
available original documents and photographs to the public. For more
information, or to donate historical materials, visit www.jchs.org, call
(816) 252-7454, or e-mail info@jchs.org. |
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