Whatever happened to renaming a Kansas City street for MLK? Officials have a plan
Kansas City officials had hoped last fall to rename a swath of roadway to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — and finally relieve Kansas City of its status as one of the only large cities without such a street.
But few people attended their sessions inviting public comment. There’s been little progress since.
Now officials say they’ll launch a new round of hearings, with renewed efforts to draw more people so that the issue can be decided by mid-year.
“And turn this from a black eye for Kansas City into a celebration, turn this into a moment to honor a man who stood for what we all should stand for: equality and togetherness and economic stability for Black people,” said Chris Goode, a member of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, which governs the city’s parks and boulevards.
Monday marks the second national Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day since Kansas City voters decided to remove the civil rights leader’s name from a historic boulevard, and restore its original: The Paseo.
And while Kansas Citians split on renaming that street for King, officials are hoping residents will coalesce around another one — right through the heart of town.
In the aftermath of the November 2019 vote to remove King’s name from The Paseo, a historic boulevard through the city’s predominantly Black East Side, City Hall moved to collect residents’ proposals for another way to honor him. While the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that progress, protests last spring over racial inequality lent new urgency to the question of which historical figures to honor with street names, fountains, statues and other landmarks.
Now, the parks board is considering renaming Volker Boulevard, Swope Parkway and a portion of Blue Parkway for King. The route runs from Main Street on the west to 55th Street on the east.
Jack Holland, chair of the board, said the group would schedule public meetings in the next month and hopefully vote in the first half of the year. He said it was important the board be able to safely hold a couple of public comment sessions where residents can attend in person — not just online — complicating the process.
A long time coming
Renaming a boulevard for King has been a years-long discussion in Kansas City. In 2018, a group of ministers from the East Side approached previous members of the parks board about renaming The Paseo for King, but they were rebuffed.
After months of wrangling, the City Council voted 8-4 to rename Paseo, and the city held a ceremony to replace the first Paseo sign at 34th Street.
But some residents along the boulevard objected, mounting a campaign to undo the renaming. They gathered signatures and put the issue on the November 2019 ballot. Residents voted overwhelmingly to restore the Paseo name.
The city then asked for public input in early 2020.
Little happened once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. Then, in June, with protests over racial injustice in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, conversations began anew about who should be memorialized in Kansas City.
The Parks Board decided to remove the name of J.C. Nichols, the real estate developer whose prolific use of restrictive covenants kept Black people from buying his homes in Kansas City and Johnson County.
The board once again turned to public input regarding the proposal to rename Volker, Swope and Blue Parkway. Only a few residents, however, attended.
Goode and Holland said the parks department will announce another series of listening sessions soon. Holland said he imagined the board would vote on renaming the proposed route in the first half of this year.
Proponents of renaming The Paseo for King chose that route because of its prominence on the city’s East Side.
The Rev. Vernon P. Howard Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, said Black children should be able to see the street and be inspired. He said the street should also fall in the Central City Economic Development Sales Tax District, an incentive program set up to spur development on the city’s East Side, so that the future MLK Blvd. could be a catalyst for investment.
The proposed corridor, he said, fits with the principles outlined by the SCLC, an organization King helped found. He also said naming an east-west corridor would bridge communities segregated by race and income, a symbolic idea brought up time and again by residents who have weighed in on what street should be renamed for King.
Given its prominence and historic connection to the city’s original park and boulevard system, The Paseo was the best fit as a tribute to King, Howard said.
“There is no choice that can compare to that,” he said. “However … this corridor of various roadways is significant because it does, in fact, bring to us a location that is right there centered in the city, and that is important.”
As for the progress toward establishing a street honoring King, Howard said it should have happened decades ago. But he said the parks board was doing the wise thing by holding more public comment sessions.
Howard said it was important to remember that renaming a street for King is central to the racial justice movement.
“It is actually a part of the movement to ensure that Black heroes and Black history and Black lives do matter,” Howard said. “It is the same issue, and so we hope people will be sensitive to that and be supportive.”
What neighbors say
Goode said the parks board had not heard any organized pushback. Unlike Paseo, the route has few homes that face the boulevard, meaning far fewer individuals would have to change their addresses.
Swope Health’s central facility sits just east of the intersection where Swope Parkway turns into Blue Parkway.
CEO Jeron Ravin said residents in the area have lower than average life expectancy.
“It continues to be an environment that impedes actualizing health, whether mental, physical, or emotional,” Ravin said in a statement to The Star. “It is emblematic of Dr. King’s dreams not yet realized and the work that must continue.”
People of color in the Kansas City metro and across the country have been disproportionately hurt by COVID-19. The age-adjusted death rate for Hispanic and Black communities in Kansas City outpaces deaths among white people, according to the Kansas City Health Department.
“We view what we do at Swope Health as an extension of Dr. King’s dream and it is our hope that any Kansas City corridor bearing his name will reflect his life’s work,” Ravin said.
The Kauffman Foundation, near Volker Boulevard, said it hopes the city can find consensus on how to honor King.
“We’d be supportive of the change to rename Volker/Swope/Blue Parkway if that’s the decision of the community,” the organization said.
Many of the neighborhood associations along the route did not return requests for comment.
At the west end, the first few blocks lie in the South Plaza neighborhood. The neighborhood group’s president, Cliff Couty, said South Plaza had supported a briefly considered proposal to rename J.C. Nichols Parkway to honor King and would back the proposal to rename Volker.
“I think it’s time to try to bridge some of the racial divides,” Couty said, “and this is a unifying theme that hopefully a lot of people in the city can get behind.”
