Kansas City clings to its racist past. Slaveholder names staying on streets, monuments
Last year, the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department was honored for its commitment to addressing inequities within the parks system. How quickly things change.
The National Civic League named Kansas City an All-America City award winner last June, in part for the parks department’s work to establish a special initiative to spruce up parks in some of the city’s roughest neighborhoods.
Equity, parks department officials called it. No matter the ZIP code, every family deserves a safe, kid-friendly park to play and exercise, they said.
Could a similar designation be out of the question in the near future?
During a public meeting in March, Jack Holland, president of the Board of Parks and Recreation commissioners, made a stunning admission: The board was no longer considering a plan to rename streets and other memorials tied to racists.
We once proposed a regional renaming committee and still support that. In the interim, city officials must seek the public’s input into what streets must be changed or which relics need to go. We can’t erase history. But we must not continue to honor bigots.
Two years ago, a nationwide reckoning on race relations in this country took place. The Kansas City Council unanimously approved an ordinance ordering the parks board to start a renaming process. That plan never materialized. Little progress was made to identify city-owned memorials and monuments with ties to slavery.
And the parks board is to blame.
The development is disappointing, said District 3 Councilwoman Melissa Robinson. Attempts to reach Holland and Parks Director Chris Cotten were unsuccessful.
“The average resident has to wonder if we are really serious about if Black lives matter,” Robinson said. “When things get quiet, we go back on our commitments.”
John Wornall once owned six slaves. He has a major street in Kansas City named after him. So does Allen B.H. McGee, a Southern sympathizer who owned at least five slaves.
McGee was 54 when he married a 19-year-old woman whose father claimed at least 20 human beings as property.
Hotel owner, publisher and physician Benoist Troost, was a slave owner, too. The street named for the Dutchman is the imaginary but all-too-real dividing line that historically and rather intentionally separated the haves and have-nots in Kansas City.
These streets and many more with controversial pasts are safe for now. Unless the City Council acts.
The parks board has jurisdiction over the city’s boulevards and fountains. The commissioners also reserve the right to rename streets that pay homage to slave owners and others with history of discriminatory actions.
But the City Council can seek a name change for any street the city has authority over, Robinson said.
As with any change, community involvement is critical. Will the council learn from the saga of renaming The Paseo years ago? That fiasco almost cost the city its chance to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not to mention the public money that was wasted.
After another community-led effort, the parks board voted to rename a stretch of road along Blue and Swope parkways and Volker Boulevard after the slain civil rights icon.
The parks commissioner and interim director who led that process and other equity work, Chris Goode and Roosevelt Lyons, respectively, are no longer with the department.
Former commissioner: Change Troost to Truth
The parks board’s failure to act on the City Council’s request follows a troublesome pattern.
Goode, the former KC parks commissioner, owns a business on Troost. He prefers the name Truth Avenue, according to a petition on change.org.
“I believe that it is time for us to truly embrace our heinous past and tell the truth about its history across all corners beginning here and now,” Goode wrote in the petition. “Opposition to such a movement is opposition that has the desire to perpetuate racism and imbalance.”
Goode is calling for more change. “Dr. Benoist Troost shouldn’t be celebrated in any capacity and he certainly shouldn’t be celebrated on one of the most well-known avenues our city has ever housed,” Goode wrote in a letter to city officials.
The renaming of a street will not erase the city’s shameful past. But will Kansas City officials listen?
