KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The history of Kansas City is more than just blues, baseball and barbecue. The city hopes to highlight that message with a new African American heritage trail.
With the help of a state grant, the Kansas City Historic Preservation Office will create a map and website featuring sites on the historic register, as well as additional ones identified through research and public input.
Both the Historic Kansas City Foundation and the Black Archives of Mid-America are also working on the project.
"The idea is we have all these sites, but there's really no comprehensive way to look at them," said KCMO Historic Preservation Officer Bradley Wolf.
While some sites, like the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, immediately come to mind, Wolf explained there are some overlooked gems that could appear on the map.
One such example is the now boarded-up house on 12th and Euclid that belonged to Sarah Rector.
"She was really Kansas City's first African American female millionaire," Wolf said.
Another potential site is the Swope Park Swimming Pool.
"It was 1954 when the federal court ordered the park department and the city to open the Swope Park Swimming Pool to African Americans," recalled Alvin Brooks.
Brooks was a young police cadet assigned there at the time. He applauds the idea of creating an African American heritage trail.
"I think the whole effort to designate the cultural part of the African American community is a great movement. I'm just hopeful the right historians and the right people who do this are included in that," he said.
Wolf is hopeful too, that creating the trail will not only highlight history but also save places. One such example is the Satchel Paige house, which went up in flames earlier this year.
"At a minimum, we want to make sure these sites are well known, and hopefully it will encourage people to invest money and preserve these sites for the future," Wolf said.
A public meeting about the trail will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center.
