Missouri gerrymander would split KC along its ‘deepest racial divide’: Troost Ave.
Troost Avenue had long served as a dividing line of racial segregation in Kansas City, a physical reminder of historic redlining from the Jim Crow era.
Now, the so-called Troost Divide is being used to carve up Kansas City again.
A Missouri Republican plan to gerrymander the state’s congressional map would use Troost Avenue as a dividing line, splitting residents who live on either side of the street between two districts and two representatives.
The map, proposed by Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe amid pressure from President Donald Trump, would place residents living on the west side of Troost in the 4th Congressional District that would stretch to southern Missouri. Residents on the east side would live in a 5th District that extends to the central part of the state.
The proposed dividing line has raised alarm bells from Kansas City residents and lawmakers, who frame it as tone deaf at best. Others view it as a brazen attempt to split up Kansas City’s minority voters.
“By drawing the line at Troost, this map weaponizes and further perpetuates Kansas City’s deepest racial divide — splitting and silencing Black voters while cementing inequality into our congressional boundaries,” said Gwen Grant, the president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, whose living room window faces Troost Avenue.
Missouri Republicans have had few answers to the criticism about how the map was drawn. A small number of people inside the Missouri Capitol have seen the map’s street-level data, which Kehoe has said was crafted by his office.
A Kehoe spokesperson did not respond to questions about the Troost dividing line. House Speaker Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, and Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Noel Republican who is handling the bill, also did not respond.
Missouri House lawmakers are poised to approve the map on Tuesday this week and send it to the state Senate. The push comes as part of Kehoe’s special session aimed at carving up Kansas City to ensure a Republican has a better chance to win U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s 5th District in Congress.
For Black lawmakers who represent the Kansas City area, including Cleaver, the map’s use of Troost Avenue as a dividing line harkens back to the city’s racial divide.
“We’re moving back to the 1950s and 60s and even 70s in Kansas City, which is reestablishing Troost as the Mason-Dixon Line,” Cleaver said in a phone interview. “Whether or not they knew what they were doing…it’s bad karma.”
Cleaver, Kansas City’s longtime congressman and first Black mayor, said the Troost dividing line was one of the first things he noticed about the map. Others took notice as well.
“I honestly think that they’re going back and using those same redline tactics that have always plagued the city of Kansas City,” said Rep. Michael Johnson, a Kansas City Democrat who chairs the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus. “They pulled out that old playbook, dusted it off.”
Troost Avenue is named after a Dutch physician who owned six enslaved persons. It also marks the former site of a plantation, where between 40 to 100 people were enslaved near the intersection at 31st Street.
Once inhabited by some of the city’s wealthiest families, Troost was the target of restrictive covenants in the early 20th century that drew a distinct line of separation. It prohibited Black residents from buying homes on the west side.
For years, the street served as a de facto racial dividing line in Kansas City. Real estate advertisements often made clear whether homes in the area were “east or west of Troost.”
That sordid history has sparked calls to rename the infamous street to Truth Avenue. Those attempts have been unsuccessful so far.
Wanda and Doug Shafer live in the Troostwood neighborhood, about two blocks away from Troost Avenue. In a phone interview, both sharply criticized the map and its impact on Kansas City’s representation in Congress.
“When they focus on the east side of Troost Avenue, they’re focusing on Black and brown votes,” said Wanda Shafer, who is Black. “I will always, always, always vote, because people look like me died for that right. But it feels like it doesn’t matter.”
Doug Shafer, who is white, made clear what he thinks will happen if Missouri lawmakers approve the map.
“It’s a transparent attempt to dilute the political power of minority voters,” he said.
GOP presses forward
Kehoe and Missouri Republicans have faced intense criticism for the way in which they rolled out the proposed map. In heated hearings over the past week, Republicans released very little information about the map’s impact on specific communities across the Kansas City area.
Lacing those concerns is the looming controversy over who actually crafted the map, which Kehoe unveiled on the Friday before Labor Day weekend.
Kehoe and Republican supporters have consistently said that Kehoe’s “team in Missouri” created the map. Meanwhile, Trump posted his own copy of the map on social media roughly 30 minutes after Kehoe called lawmakers into a special session.
Emails obtained by The Star indicate that high-ranking Kehoe staffers and top officials in the Missouri Office of Administration discussed the legality of redistricting in July. Those emails shed some light on which officials might have been involved in crafting the map.
A document circulating among lawmakers appears to show the demographic breakdown of the proposed gerrymandered map. The document, obtained by The Star, suggests that the proposed 5th District would have a 17% Black population compared to a 68% white population.
In the current map, Black voters who identify as one race make up roughly 22% of 5th District voters, while white voters make up 61%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As Missouri lawmakers prepare to debate the gerrymandered map over the next several days, residents living across the sprawling Kansas City area are taking notice. Their representation and the future of the city, they feel, is at stake.
And the transparent use of Troost Avenue as a dividing line symbolizes the effort they so vehemently oppose.
“Troost has long symbolized the tale of two cities: prosperity to the west and poverty to the east,” said Grant, with the Urban League. “This proposed map is a stark example of democracy under siege.
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
