GREATER KANSAS CITY AND THE URBAN CRISIS, 1830-1968 by VAN WILLIAM HUTCHISON B.A., Indiana State University, 1999 M.A., Indiana State University, 2001 AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2013 Abstract In the last two decades, the study of postwar American cities has gone through a significant revisionist reinterpretation that overturned an older story of urban decay and decline beginning with the tumultuous 1960s and the notion that a conservative white suburban backlash politics against civil rights and liberalism appeared only after 1966. These new studies have shown that, in fact, American cities had been in jeopardy as far back as the 1940s and that white right-wing backlash against civil rights was also much older than previously thought. This “urban crisis” scholarship also directly rebutted neoconservative and New Right arguments that Great Society liberal programs were at fault for the decline of inner-city African American neighborhoods in the past few decades by showing that the private sector real estate industry and 1930s New Deal housing programs, influenced by biased industry guidelines, caused those conditions through redlining. My case study similarly recasts the history of American inner cities in the last half of the twentieth century. It uses the Greater Kansas City metropolitan area, especially Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, as a case study. I deliberately chose Kansas City because traditional urban histories and labor histories have tended to ignore it in favor of cities further east or on the west coast. Furthermore, I concur with recent trends in the historical scholarship of the Civil Rights Movement towards more of a focus on northern racism and loczating the beginning of the movement in the early twentieth century. In this study, I found evidence of civil rights activism in Kansas City, Missouri as far back as the late 1860s and 1870s. I trace the metropolitan area’s history all the way back to its antebellum beginnings, when slavery still divided the nation and a national railroad system was being built. I weave both labor and changes in transportation over time into the story of the city and its African-American population over time. GREATER KANSAS CITY AND THE URBAN CRISIS, 1830-1968 by VAN WILLIAM HUTCHISON B.A., Indiana State University, 1999 M.A., Indiana State University, 2001 A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2013 Approved by: Major Professor Sue Zschoche Copyright VAN W. HUTCHISON 2013 Abstract In the last decade to fifteen years, the study of postwar American major cities has gone through a significant revisionist reinterpretation that overturns the older stories of urban decay and decline as beginning with the tumultuous 1960s and the notion that a conservative white suburban backlash politics against civil rights and liberalism appeared only after 1966 by showing that, in fact, American cities had been in trouble as far back as the 1940s and that right- wing backlash politics itself was also much older than previously thought. This “urban crisis” scholarship also directly rebutted neoconservative and New Right arguments that Great Society liberal programs were at fault for the conditions of inner-city African American neighborhoods by showing that, in fact, it had been the private sector real estate industry and 1930s New Deal housing programs influenced by biased industry guidelines that had caused those conditions through redlining. My case study is in this vein of revisionism towards the history of American inner cities in the last half of the twentieth century, using the Greater Kansas City metropolitan area, especially as pertains to Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, as my case study. I deliberately chose Kansas City as an additional iconoclastic move, since traditional urban histories and labor histories have tended to ignore it in favor of cities further east or on the west coast. Furthermore, I concur with recent trends in studying the history of the civil rights movement that focus more on northern racism and which moves the beginning of the movement back to the early twentieth century. In fact, in this study, I found evidence of civil rights activism in Kansas City, Missouri as far back as the late 1860s and 1870s. I trace the metropolitan area’s history all the way back to its antebellum beginnings, when slavery was dividing the nation and a national railroad system was being built. I weave both labor and changes in transportation over time into the story of the city and its African-American population over time. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ ix Dedication .................................................................................................................................... xiv INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: ROOTS: KANSAS CITY, KANSAS AND KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, 1850-1900 ......................................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER TWO: JIM CROW AND THE ORIGINS OF THE URBAN CRISIS IN GREATER KANSAS CITY, 1900-1920 ............................................................................................. 52 CHAPTER THREE: ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENT IN GREATER KANSAS CITY, 1870-1920 ............................................. 85 CHAPTER FOUR: KANSAS CITY’S BLACK WORKING-CLASS, POLITICS, AND ORGANIZED LABOR IN AN URBAN CRISIS, 1920-32 ........................................... 121 CHAPTER FIVE: TRANSPORTATION, RACE, WORLD WAR II, AND URBAN CRISIS IN THE TWO KANSAS CITIES, 1890-1945 ..................................................................... 171 CHAPTER SIX: GREATER KANSAS CITY IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, 1940-68 .......... 221 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 333 viii Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my committee, past and present members both, here at Kansas State University for helping me through not only the final stages of this project but also through my entire growth as an historian. The entire Department has been wonderful to me, and I greatly appreciate their advice, instruction, and dedication to my academic progress throughout the years. I especially want to thank my committee chair and advisor, Dr. Sue Zschoche, for making this project possible first through both introducing me to Thomas Sugrue and the literature on the urban crisis in the first place and subsequently, by agreeing to let me take it on despite how large and foreboding tackling a history project of this size and scope can be. In making this project possible, I would also like to thank the staff at the Missouri Valley Special Collections Room at the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library, especially the very knowledgeable and helpful archivist Dr. John A. Horner for his assistance in locating Kansas City’s rich archival record relating to its African-American citizens over two centuries within the Missouri Valley Special Collections’ considerable stacks of file folders, boxes, and microfiche. I would additionally like to thank the Kansas State Archives at the Historical Society in Topeka and the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City for their assistance as well. The staff in Jefferson City was especially kind, gracious, and helpful to me during my stays there in July and early September. I also wish to thank the Graduate School outside committee member, Michelle Jannette for filling in at the last minute when needed. Last but not least, I’d like to thank our Department’s secretary and manager, Shelly Reves, for helping Dr. Zschoche and myself speed this dissertation up to Graduate School standards six months early, as it turned out. I also want to thank Professor Sue Zschoche for everything she has done over the years to assist me, encourage me, counsel me, and make me feel at home here in Manhattan, Kansas. I ix came here in 2003 as a labor and social movements historian, and she took on advising me in spite of the fact that my specialization was unusual for most history graduate students here. I thank her immensely for that, as well as Professors Lou Williams, Jack Holl, James Franke, and Derek Hoff for working with me and contributing what they knew of labor history. I think that, as a result, my perspective as a labor and social movements historian has broadened and been enriched greatly. Zschoche’s course on history and collective memory my first year here was very influential in adding another tool with which to analyze history. Dr. Lou Williams was actually the first member of the faculty I met. This was in the summer of 2003, before the Fall semester began. My parents and I were tired after having moved me and my belongings five hundred and forty miles west on I-70 from Terre Haute, Indiana in two cars, stopping only at my Grandfather’s house in Lawrence overnight. She was very friendly and helpful in showing me and my folks around the Department