Before fire, this East Side bar was key in Kansas City’s civil rights movement
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- The Green Duck Lounge and Grill burned heavily on Sunday night with thick smoke reported.
- Leon Jordan ran the Green Duck from 1955 until his July 1970 fatal shooting.
- Kansas City Fire Department said the fire cause is unknown and will be investigated.
The Green Duck Lounge and Grill sent up plumes of thick smoke skyward on Kansas City’s East Side as it burned Sunday night.
The history of the property is both storied and sordid, as documented throughout The Star’s reporting.
Sunday night, firefighters arrived to find heavy fire and smoke coming from the two-story unoccupied building, according to a Kansas City Fire Department news release. They were pulled from inside the structure due to the intensity of the blaze.
“The cause of the fire is unknown at this time but will be investigated by KCFD,” the release reads.
Located at 2548 Prospect Avenue, the Green Duck building is just north of the Kansas City Police Department’s East Patrol campus.
The building that housed the Green Duck was built around 1900 and served as a pharmacy and restaurant before it became a bar, according to the structure’s entry on the Kansas City Historic Register.
Leon Jordan, Kansas City civil rights leader and founder of Freedom Inc., ran the Green Duck from 1955 until his death.
In July 1970, Jordan was fatally shot while closing the bar. The crime remained unsolved until Kansas City police reopened the case in 2010.
The department later released a 900-page report identifying the gunman in Jordan’s killing as an organized crime figure who was shot and killed in 1985.
The Star, which also looked into the killing, revealed that Jordan’s associations with organized crime figures, as well as his apparent disregard for angering them, likely contributed to his death.
In 2011, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office shut down the Green Duck as a public nuisance after multiple people were shot nearby. The establishment reopened in 2012.
In December 2015, Owner Jimmy Townsend was found shot behind his home on the 2900 block of Prospect Avenue.
Here are stories The Star previously reported about the Green Duck.
- Fire heavily damages historic Green Duck Lounge and Grill in Kansas City, 2026
- KC mourns ‘pillar of community’ Jimmy Townsend, owner of Green Duck Lounge, 2015
- Admirers honor slain Freedom Inc. leader Leon Jordan, 2014
- ‘70s slaying of KC politician Leon Jordan a mob hit?, 2010
- Unsolved killing of Leon Jordan echoes civil rights era, 2010
The Star’s Robert A. Cronkleton contributed to this report.
