KSHB 41 News anchor Rae Daniel covers stories across Kansas City with a focus on community groups and highlighting fun things to do on the weekends. Share your idea with Rae by email.
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Inside the Washington Chapel CME church, Dr. Cora Douglass Thompson sits down at the piano and begins to play, 'Lift Every Voice and Sing.'
"My mother insisted that all three of us had piano lessons," Dr. Thompson said. "All three of us."
Dr. Cora, and her sisters Lucille H. Douglass and Alcorama Pearl Spencer sat down with me, sharing fond memories, like their mother's gingerbread.
"You could be outside playing and you get a whiff of that and you knew, mama was making gingerbread," Dr. Cora said. "She'd make two. One for the church and one for home."
The sisters were born in the 1940s, during a time when segregation was a shared experience for the Black community.
"There are only three streets that connect to what was the segregated black community," Ms. Lucille said.
"The white elite, leaders of Parkville told my dad, 'stop telling these N's how to vote," Dr. Cora said. "That's one of the big things I remember. Everybody came to my dad asking them how to vote, everybody."
"The meetings that were being held in the Black community, were about getting indoor toilets in our school," Ms. Alcorama said. "We had to walk over to the hillside, quite a ways."
Their legacy, intertwined in Parkville's history, including Banneker Elementary, the historic African American schoolhouse, where their mother taught.
"Cora and I were a part of the last class when they closed the Banneker school," Ms. Lucille said. She said it closed after Brown V. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional.
Ms. Alcorama remembers when school was integrated. She was a freshman at Park Hill High School. She shared that she was frightened a little, but the superintendent had a conversation with her dad before she started. She was grateful for what was said to her father that day. She said while there weren't any families protesting outside the school that she remembers, she does remember some incidents of bullying and sports teams still being segregated.
They also talked about the historic church they grew up in was Washington Chapel C.M.E., which was built in 1907 by former slaves and college students.
"We stand on their shoulders," Ms. Lucille said.
Today, these sisters make sure that history is never forgotten, through events, education and conversation.
"We are benefiting from their hard work and the vision God gave them," Ms. Alcorama said. "And this church on this hill will be, known and people will be worshiping here for another 100 years."
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