Family of first Black Kansas City, Kansas, police chief longs to revive namesake park
Editor’s note: During the month of February, in honor of Black History Month and the vibrant Black community in Kansas City, The Star will feature profiles of Black Kansas Citians by telling their stories and highlighting their businesses, causes, and passions.
As Karen Daniels pushed her 8-year-old grandson Leland on the now lopsided swing, its chains creaked.
Her 9-year-old granddaughter Queen swung beside him, legs going back and forward to propel herself higher. Three other grandchildren, 13-year-old King, 7-year-old Empress and 1-year-old Alonzo, waited for their turns.
Later, while walking around the park, the history of which is part of their DNA, the children pointed out the sidewalk, cracked from edge to edge, and the rusting playground equipment. They were excited to show the stones of peace and love they helped paint, now placed in between two rose bushes, which have yet to bloom.
This park overlooks Quindaro Boulevard in Kansas City, Kansas, on a hill between Seventh and Eighth streets. Houses and a church line the park’s south and west sides. To the north is Ms R’s Cafe. It’s been identified by northeast residents and stakeholders as a community asset in the Northeast Area Master Plan, which seeks to revive the area that has seen disinvestment for years.
The parks department said there hasn’t been any money to fund improvements at the park. But Karen Daniels, great niece of the park’s namesake, has a mission.
The park is more than its dilapidated facade of a lopsided swing, splintering sidewalk and rusting paint. It represents an important history for Kansas City, Kansas, and for Karen Daniels. Named after Boston Daniels, the first Black police chief in the city, the park is in need of some love and recognition — and has been for years. His legacy, one of love, unity and community, is one that Karen Daniels is fighting to help live on.
“I’m not going to stop,” Karen Daniels said. “I’m going to keep signing up for grants and keep getting the word out and hopefully somebody is going to see it … It’s gonna be a change right here on this corner.”
Boston Daniels’ legacy
Boston Daniels, born in Foreman, Arkansas, in 1905, moved to the Kansas City area at 23 years old. He worked a series of jobs, including digging ditches, pumping gas and as a Pullman porter.
It took another 17 years before he joined the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, where he worked his way up. He was always known for dressing “dapper,” Karen Daniels said, but in his seven years stationed to catch shoplifters on Minnesota Avenue, he’d from time to time dress as a farmer or a conductor to avoid being recognized, he told The Star in 1970.
On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he, along with other Black officers from the department, joined Wyandotte and Sumner High School students who left their classes to mourn and to protest and to march in King’s memory. After a few speeches downtown, the students went back to school for a memorial service — a stark contrast to the riots that erupted across the river.
Boston Daniels and his wife Rosemary — who taught cosmetology for many years at Sumner High School — enjoyed working with young people, but did not have any children of their own.
“The community was their children,” Karen Daniels said.
He was appointed to chief in June 1970. He’s believed to be the first Black police chief of a city of similar size to KCK across the country. KCK at the time, according to census records, had a population of about 168,000.
He told Ebony Magazine in 1970 that better housing, education, health programs, recreational facilities and jobs were the best ways to fight crime.
Boston Daniels initiated a police cadet program, in-service training program, modernized communication equipment, established an internal affairs unit and added two police substations.
“I won’t say I’ve done an extraordinary job,” he told Ebony Magazine. “But I do know I’ve worked hard. I do believe, and it has been proven, that when an individual works hard and does his job, someone out there is looking at him and somewhere down the road he is bound to be rewarded for his labors. That has come to me.”
He served for just one year before a new mayor was elected and he resigned at age 66. A Star article at the time wrote that several police department employees, predominantly Black, were released.
Some members of the department were “unashamedly wiping tears from their eyes,” when Boston Daniels retired, a 1971 Star story recounts.
“He worked hard, he was good at his job and he was a good person,” said Officer Marsheé London, public information officer for KCKPD, as she stood in front of the soon-to-be-opened museum display for Boston Daniels at KCK police headquarters. “That’s the kind of legacy you want to leave behind.”
Boston Daniels was later hired by the housing authority to lead a security program. He went on to run for mayor and the school board.
In 1996, the park was dedicated to him. Formerly named Eighth Street Park, a community group hoped the renaming would inspire more cleanup in the area. That group also cleared debris and planted flowers at the park they hoped would become “an oasis,” one member told The Star.
Boston Daniels, 91 years old and in a wheelchair when the dedication happened, was honored and appreciative, Karen Daniels said. At the time, she added, the park was in good shape. Boston Daniels, who loved the young people in the community, said areas for recreation were one way to reduce crime.
The future of the park
Someday, Karen Daniels hopes to get new playground equipment, to update the swing, replace the slide, fix the cracks across the sidewalks. She wants to put in a picnic table and a grill too. “What’s a park without a grill?” she asked.
For now, she’ll work on bringing the rose bushes back to life and placing more love and unity stones across the park.
Assistant Wyandotte County/KCK Parks and Recreation Director Angel Obert said they’ve been working closely with Karen Daniels as she works to revive the park. Like other departments and city governments, she said, they’ve been dealing with tight budgets exacerbated by the pandemic. Obert said they’ll look for grants to revive Boston Daniels Park, along with other parks in the area.
Karen Daniels has been pushing to revitalize Boston Daniels Park for years.
With CARES Act funding, the parks department invested around $2.1 million to upgrade infrastructure and meet COVID-19 related safety and sanitary rules. That included added new restrooms, adding HVAC systems in some community centers gyms and resurfacing the Jersey Creek Trail.
None of that money went directly to upgrades at Boston Daniels Park.
The parks department, Karen Daniels said, has been supportive of any improvements she’s able to make recently, though the department itself hasn’t been able to fund those.
Karen Daniels said she wants children to feel proud when they play at Boston Daniels Park.
“I want them to feel not only the happiness you get from coming to a new upgraded park,” Karen Daniels said. “But the pride that you feel to know that this Black man … from Foreman, Arkansas, came to Kansas City, joined the police force and went all the way up the ranks to what he accomplished.”
It was an unseasonably warm February day as 9-year-old Queen climbed toward the sky in her lopsided swing. A silver KCK police badge sticker gleamed on the front of her jacket as she swung her legs back and forth, showing off how high she could swing, before dragging her feet in the wood chips below to slow down.
As the sun began to lower and Boston Daniels’ descendants left the park, the sound of the creaking chains died away and the swings crept to a halt.
This story was originally published February 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
