“Church Hill,” one of Kansas City’s first Black communities

By Diane Euston

  Kansas City’s history of segregation doesn’t play out much differently than most major cities. It didn’t happen overnight and it certainly didn’t happen with one law or policy.

  We tend today to think of the African American stronghold of 18th and Vine where a vibrant culture enraptured in jazz and blues developed in the shadows of historic Lincoln High School (now Lincoln Prep). It’s where Black businesses thrived when a community was shut off from neighborhoods to the west due to racial covenants and redlining.

  But Kansas City didn’t always look this way, even though our focus on this rich history often centers in the early 20th century along this corridor. Little scholarship has studied the vibrant, small communities where Blacks lived next door to whites and European-born immigrants.

  Prior to the 20th century, there were a few places in Kansas City where African Americans settled – a precursor to the Exoduster movement. West Kansas – now commonly referred to as the West Bottoms, housed Blacks, whites, Irish immigrants and more. Belvidere and Hick’s Hollow, just north of Independence Avenue and east of Troost contained cheap houses in ravines near the Missouri River where African Americans also settled.

  But one early neighborhood stood a bit above the rest as it housed some of the earliest organized institutions strictly catering to African Americans in Kansas City. It was called Church Hill.

Early Settlement of Peery Place

  Before the land that came to be known as Church Hill was parceled out into a subdivision, the land was in the hands of Rev. Edward Thompson Peery (1800-1864), a Methodist minister.

  Rev. Peery came to the area to administer to the Native American tribes who were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (now Kansas). During the 1830s and 1840s, Rev. Peery worked at the Shawnee Indian Mission.

  He bought land and settled his family in the 1850s in Jackson County, Mo. and built a log home deep in a forest at current-day 9th and Harrison. 

  For whatever the reason, Rev. Peery opted to sell his original farmland to Baptist minister and real estate mogul, Dr. Johnston Lykins, and in 1857, Lykins along with Kersey Coates and David Hood platted the subdivision they called Peery Place.

  Kersey Coates (1823-1887) was a Quaker businessman who was vehemently against slavery. He arrived in Kansas City on the eve of the Border Wars in 1854 and promptly developed the upscale subdivision Quality Hill. 

  Despite being active in the Free State movement in Kansas, Kersey Coates was able to set his ideals aside and do business with many pro-slavery sympathizers in Kansas City. 

  Peery Place stretched from 8th Street to 12th Street, Holmes to Troost. The subdivision butted up on the south side to one of the more ambitious early developments known as McGee’s Addition.

  At this point in Kansas City’s history, there wasn’t that much development outside of the levee and businesses that grew from it nearby. It would take years for all of these early subdivisions to fill up, especially since additions such as Peery Place were quite hilly.

  But there was an exception to this early growth out south, and it was in McGee’s Addition. Platted the same year as Peery Place by Milt McGee (1819-1873), this addition to the city took off pretty quickly due to its colorful promotor. McGee’s Addition included Grand Avenue, the widest street in town, and to encourage settlement in the middle of nowhere, Milt built a row of two-story brick buildings on the east side of Grand Avenue between 14th and 15th Street. 

   By 1860, just three years after platting the “preposterous” McGee’s Addition, the area boasted a population of 2,319 and had 469 buildings.

  But Peery Place didn’t attract that much settlement, likely due to the forest and hills within it. Early historians such as Charles Deatherage claimed in his 1928 book “Early History of Greater Kansas City” that Peery Place’s lots “were sold only to negroes until 1870, at any low price they would bring.” 

  The records of land sales don’t support this claim that has been repeated by historians (including me) in the past. Early lots were purchased by anyone who had the money for them, and that included a few newly-emancipated African Americans.

  Kansas City’s population of African Americans surged after the Civil War, and not just because of how many enslaved were held in bondage in the area. In 1860, just shy of 4,000 enslaved people populated the area. But just to the east, Lafayette County (lower in overall population) held over 6,000 enslaved.

  So after the Civil War, jobs were hard to come by and before the Exoduster movement from the South occurred, cities like Kansas City saw an influx of Black population from neighboring counties come to the city for better jobs and way of life.

  At the center of this new life after freedom was granted was education and religion, and both of these were offered to African Americans in Peery Place.  Two churches were the cornerstone of the early freed African American community of Kansas City, and their roots trace back before the Civil War ended. These two churches and the community around it quickly became known as “Church Hill.” 

  Historian Charles E. Coultier wrote in his book “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden” about Church Hill, stating, “In a rectangularly shaped area from Eighth to Tenth and Locust to Forest, African American teachers and ministers lived adjacent to packinghouse laborers, barbers and domestics.”

The Second Baptist Church

  In 1863 near 4th and Troost, a Baptist preacher named Rev. Clark Moore and a Methodist preacher named Rev. John Loving gathered to organize a church community. The story goes that they asked the men, women and children to choose whether they wanted to follow the Baptist or Methodist faith.

  Two-thirds of those present chose Baptist and one-third chose Methodist; thus, the two original Black churches were founded. They became known as Allen Chapel AME and the Second Baptist Church.

  Charter members of the Baptist church led by Rev. Moore included Michael Jones, J. Wiggins, Thomas Stewart, James Allen, Mrs. Prude Anderson, and Mrs. Grace Bell. The trustees of the church purchased Lots 13-14 in Peery Place for $200 on July 4, 1865 – the date chosen to sign the deed is likely no coincidence.

  It wasn’t until 1872 that the church was able to erect a building on the southwest corner of 10th and Charlotte on the land purchased years earlier. The cornerstone was laid in September 1871, and the church was known early-on as the First Colored Baptist Church and the Gay Street Baptist Church.

  In 1873, the congregation of the Second Baptist Church borrowed money from the Home Mission Society in New York in order to erect their building. The group was then led by Rev. Henry Roberson, a man born a slave in 1839 in Virginia. He had been brought by his slaveholder to Saline County, Mo. as a young boy.

  He lived his youth in chains, escaping from bondage in 1863. Roberson moved to Illinois where he worked on his education and then focused on a “full theological course.” He was ordained in 1869, first returning to Sedalia and later to Lexington. 

  His next charge was Kansas City’s Second Baptist Church. He oversaw the building of this beautiful church at a cost of $5,000 and watched the membership grow to over 500. He served the community for over 27 years.

  As the African American community grew in Kansas City, so did Second Baptist Church. By 1907, 911 people worshipped here, and many of its members lived around it. A fire in 1926 damaged the church severely, and the congregation was forced to have services at the YMCA on The Paseo. After two years, the church was back to its original location.

  An offer too good to turn down came to the congregation; Second Baptist Church was offered a new location at a church already standing at 10th and Park. In 1963, they moved to their current location at 39th and Monroe.

Allen Church AME & the Episcopal Church

  Just across the street from the original Second Baptist Church was the congregation of Allen Church AME. Built on Lots 16-17 in Peery Place at the northwest corner of 10th and Charlotte, this group purchased their land in 1868, led by trustees William Lewis, Robert Campbell, Thomas Logan, Felix Brown and Burrell Turner.

  The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church was founded in 1816 in Philadelphia by Rev. Richard Allen. It was founded to combat racial discrimination and segregation in churches, and it was the first independent Black denomination in the United States.

  Rev. John Loving, a Methodist minister from Quindaro, Kan., led the congregation until Rev. William B. Ousley (1839-1900) was named pastor of the new church. He was one of the first AME ministers in the state of Missouri and was allegedly enslaved by a brother of Jefferson Davis.

  He also opened the first AME church in Independence (St. Paul’s) out of his home in 1868.

  On this piece of land at 10th and Charlotte, Rev. Ousley helped erect a log church. He later recalled how “the woods grew all around where the structure stood.” 

  The Kansas City Call reported in 1959 that the church was “built on land once owned by Thomas Logan, an ex-slave, a charter member of the church, who operated a flourishing blacksmith shop on the site over which the present altar was built.”

  In January 1876, a fire started at Thomas Logan’s home next door to the church. Logan was a local blacksmith and one of the trustees. The newspaper reported, “It being a light wooden structure also burned to the ground despite the efforts of the firemen to extinguish the flames.”

  Luckily, the church was insured. A second larger brick structure was completed in 1877, but the structure was found to be unsound In 1895. The congregation moved to its current location at 4125 Benton Blvd. in 1960.

  Also joining the two religious institutions on Church Hill in 1882 was St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church. This African American congregation was first erected at 1025 Troost Avenue on Church Hill. They moved from their original location to 27th and Benton Blvd. in 1950.

Education Offered at Lincoln School on Church Hill 

  Beginning in 1867 in a rented space at 10th and McGee, Lincoln School was the first Black school in the area.  Lincoln School, named after the president who emancipated the enslaved, was first built at 9th and Charlotte (then Gay) St. right in the heart of Church Hill in 1869.

  It certainly should be no surprise that Peery Place was a good location for a Black school; the churches already were in motion. Since this was one of the only schools offered for Black children (outside of Penn School in Westport), its location certainly drew the African American community to the area.

  This can be seen in the census records in 1870 where a small group of African Americans, some working as washerwomen, teachers, blacksmiths and common laborers are located in Peery Place. 

  The first principal of Lincoln School was James Milton Turner (c. 1840-1915) in 1868, a powerful political leader who would later serve as consul general to Liberia and lead African Americans in the Exoduster Movement.

  While in charge of Lincoln School in Kansas City, Turner moved the operation in 1869 to a small wooden church at 10th and Charlotte (then called Gay St.) that housed the Second Baptist Church. The school had “three large school rooms, well furnished with educational fixtures.”  

  The second principal was James Dallas Bowser (1846-1923). He took over this small school of 125 pupils as he and his wife moved into Peery Place on Church Hill at 912 E. 10th Street.

  By 1873, Lincoln School was “totally unfit” as a school and enrollment swelled. They had to rent rooms across the street from the building just to accommodate the amount of students wishing to be educated.

J. Dallas Bowser fought for years to have a larger school built for colored children, but his cries were ignored. Because there was a large population of African Americans who had settled around the school and the churches on Church Hill, he argued that “the colored people bought within their means” in this neighborhood.

  By 1878, a new building for Lincoln School was erected at the northwest corner of 11th and Campbell, and within a few years, the school would add high school classes to the curriculum.  The first graduating high school class in 1886 included three girls and one boy. 

  Even as the population in Kansas City soared and more and more people moved into the city, some neighborhoods like Church Hill remained integrated. J. Dallas Bowser’s good friend, William F. Davis (1844-1891) made his home at 11th and Charlotte. He was the first African American appointed to the Kansas City Missouri Police Department in 1874.

A Push to the East Side

    The population boom in the 1880s caused overdevelopment of inexpensive, affordable housing on Kansas City’s east side. The financial crisis of 1890 created even more housing inventory. James Shortridge, author of “Kansas City and How it Grew,” stated, “With exclusionary laws still in the future, location [of Blacks] remained primarily a matter of affordability.” This along with good access to public transportation may have been the driving force behind the east side’s growing Black population.

  In 1893, the Kansas City School District opened Attucks School to support a growing Black population on the east side in a rented building on 18th St. The school was named for Crispus Attucks, a Black man killed in the Boston Massacre.

  Lincoln School was moved to 19th and Tracy, further pushing the educational opportunities of the Black community to the east side. By 1936, Lincoln High School, coined “the Castle on the Hill,” moved to its current location at 22nd and Woodland.

Capturing the Past for a Better Future

  Today, Kansas City remains one of the most racially and economically segregated cities in the United States, a statistic we should not be proud of. This legacy endures after decades of redlining and racial covenants that drew a line throughout our city.

  Two widely-respected books about racial segregation in Kansas City – some of the only books tackling the subject*- don’t even start their deep conversation about African American communities and the rise of segregation until 1900. Kansas City certainly had a vibrant Black population prior to this date.

  It’s easy for us to focus on certain elements of the past and forget about the other pieces of the puzzle. Church Hill is a perfect example of this. Before Kansas City carved out racial enclaves such as the east side for the African American population, these early settlers set up vibrant communities where they worked, worshiped and ensured they educated the next generation. 

  Today, Church Hill has been eaten up by I-70 and 71 highways. We zip past this patch of land with no thought or recognition of what once was. But Church Hill built a strong community at a time when African Americans were piecing together new lives outside of the chains of slavery.

Additional reading:

• “A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960 by Sherry Lamb Schirmer
• “Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000” by Kevin Fox Gotham
• ‘Take Up the Black Man’s Burden:’ Kansas City’s African American Communities, 1865-1939” by Charles E. Coulter