Racism in Kansas City

Book excerpt: RACISM IN KANSAS CITY: A SHORT HISTORY BY G.S. GRIFFIN FOREWORD BY ALVIN BROOKS Anti-black racism still infects American society. African Americans are more likely than whites to be killed by police, to be pulled over, arrested, imprisoned, and executed. They are more likely to be turned down for a job, to be underpaid, or offered a bad home loan than equally qualified whites. Racism's effects are tragic. The killing of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, triggered riots. A white terrorist massacred black worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina. Eight black churches were burned in the South in ten days. Kansas Citians, like so many others across the nation, wonder, "Could it happen here?" The answer lies in this study of Kansas City's darkest moments-slavery, the border war, the Civil War, bombings of black homes, lynchings, the segregation of neighborhoods and schools, the civil rights struggle, the Black Panther movement, the 1968 race riot, assassinations in the 1970s, the infamous Missouri v. Jenkins U.S. Supreme Court case, and the racial inequities that still plague Kansas City today. Threaded throughout Racism in Kansas City are stories of those who fought ardently against racist policies...and sometimes won. Racism in Kansas City, in the end, offers readers a hopeful message: with awareness comes understanding and then change.