‘It’s past time’: Residents urge city to strip J.C. Nichols’ name from fountain, road

The first of some 50 speakers who came to speak out on whether to rename J.C. Nichols Parkway and fountain foreshadowed the overwhelming sentiment of a community session Thursday night.

“It’s past time to discontinue memorializing and celebrating segregationists,” said Jessica James, a resident of Kansas City for 20 years. “Kansas City, the city of fountains, is better than this.” James then presented a petition with 1,700 names asking that the landmarks be renamed.

About 160 people filled the session held by Kansas City Parks and Recreation board members and the department’s director at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center. That was about the maximum allowed so people could maintain social distance and avoid spreading the coronavirus.

Earlier this month, parks Commissioner Chris Goode proposed removing Nichols’ name from the landmarks on the Country Club Plaza, which Nichols developed in the 1920s. Goode said Nichols promoted racism by restricting Black people and others from the neighborhoods he developed on both sides of the state line.

Before the session began, parks director Terry Rynard said her department received 355 emails on the issue — of which 82% favored removing the name.

At Thursday’s session, Moses Brings Plenty, a member of the Oglala Lakota nation, began by using “one of the original first languages of this continent.”

“I’m here not to pick a side, but to stand for what a higher power believed in and still believes in. And that name is called diversity. It is called compassion,” he said. “We can’t change the past, but we can change tomorrow by what we do today for the sake of all people.”

Katrina Abella said that every time she walks her dog in her neighborhood near Brookside, she sees a sign that reads, “Welcome to Oak Meyer Gardens, developed by the J.C. Nichols company.”

“I’m reminded every day that my family would not be welcome here,” Abella said. “Had my parents been alive when our neighborhood was developed, they would not have been able to buy the big yellow house that me and my brothers grew up in.”

Brandon Henderson, the student body president at University of Missouri-Kansas City, grew up in North Kansas City and now lives on the Plaza.

“Before all of that, I am a Black man — a Black man who grew up in the aftermath of J.C. Nichols’ segregation project in Kansas City,” Henderson said.

“Kansas City is in the midst of a day of reckoning. We have to decide if we are going to retain these symbols of our past — a past that has become a reality for many Black men, such as myself, or if we are going to revisit that history. … It’s time for us to change what we value.”

Lucky Garcia spoke on behalf of the group One Struggle KC, a Black-led organization fighting police brutality in communities of color.

Garcia suggested renaming the fountain for Ryan Stokes, Cameron Lamb, Donnie Sanders or others who were fatally shot by Kansas City police officers.

“There is no shortage of indigenous and Black people in history who have died at, suffered from or prevailed through the hands of white supremacy,” Garcia said.

A few speakers did not want Nichols’ name removed.

“The name of J.C. Nichols needs to be remembered and honored in Kansas City for what he’s done for our city,” Tim O’Mara said. “Surely he was not a perfect man. He had faults, but everybody has faults.”

Some speakers offered suggestions for name replacements, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; state Sen. Yvonne Wilson, who recently pushed to have old racist covenants removed from homes associations; Levi Harrington, a Black man lynched in Kansas City in 1882; Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton; and Kansas City jazz musician Steve Harvey, who died in a racially motivated murder.

The department will hold another public comment session virtually at 2 p.m. June 24. The department will post details of the event on its website, KCparks.org. The public can still email questions and comments to KCParksEngage@kcmo.org.

The board expects to discuss the name removal further at its next board meeting on June 30.

This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 10:20 PM.