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 pleas 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? |
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