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“It all came together,” said Jeremy Drouin, the manager of Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library, reflecting on the history project’s critical moment. “As a city, as a nation, we are looking at more closely examining racial issues,” he said. “Looking at our past is an important part of that . . . (as) we’re seeing history repeating itself.” The faces of Kansas City’s civil rights leaders and barrier-breakers throughout the book reflect back the pain Kansas City still bears today, like the crowd in a photo with Bruce R. Watkins marching during the shocking days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. The injustices they marched against — “police violence, segregated schools, lack of affordable housing for the African American community — we’re seeing these issues rise again,” Drouin said. The book, he said, will strengthen the community with wisdom on “what’s going on nationally and the conversations we’re having, plus the lessons we can learn from the biographies.” The project gathers biographies of heroes who have passed. While many of the men and women profiled are well known — like Charlie Parker and Satchel Paige — many more tell of the heroic lives of people whose bold achievements were fading from Kansas City’s history. The stories are as old as that of Hiram Young, born in 1812 into slavery, who built wagons for Westward pioneers and started a school for Black children in Independence. And the stories are as close as two newly profiled heroes who passed away in 2020 — Bailus Tate Jr. and Rosemary Smith Lowe. The project historians have drawn from at least 28 archival resources in the past decade to build the collection of stories and pictures. They mined the depths of multiple historical societies and library collections, both near and as far as Wisconsin and New York. They searched newspaper clippings and numerous university records. “The project is always revelatory,” said Local Investment Commission Deputy Director Brent Schondelmeyer. “You learn stories of people you didn’t know — people you wish you knew. You learn of the contributions they made and, regrettably, the obstacles they had to overcome, often not of their own making.” In looking back at their stories, Williams said, the book is “forward-thinking” in what builds into a powerful arc toward the future. These men and women shaped Kansas City and the nation as educators, activists, entrepreneurs, entertainers and athletes. “Look at how they made so many advances with all the structures that stood against them,” Williams said. “Missouri was a slave state. Racism was rooted here. Here is the positive: How Black people overcame that racism.” While the Missouri Bicentennial can revel in a remarkable history of achievement and generosity, it’s also true that statehood came bargained with the dedication of a slave-holding state — a concession to our nation’s supreme racial injustice. That’s why Kansas City’s Black history must “reclaim our narrative,” North, the poet, writes, and tell their stories: “. . . Sarah Rector, Junius Groves, Tom Bass and Anna Jones. Count Basie, Chester Franklin, Bernard Powell and D. A. Holmes . . . “I chant their names, almost as if holy.” Reprinted with permission from the Local Investment Commission.
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