Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
To be honest, even though most people who know anything about Kansas City know that it has a sizable, influential black population, I feel like people who don’t know anything about it would assume Kansas City is 95%+ white because it has “Kansas” in its name.
Black people know Kansas City has Black people. It’s really white people who don’t but that’s the majority so I see your point.
To be honest, even though most people who know anything about Kansas City know that it has a sizable, influential black population, I feel like people who don’t know anything about it would assume Kansas City is 95%+ white because it has “Kansas” in its name.
Those same people probably know nothing about the "Exodusters" either.
These were freed Blacks who migrated north up the Mississippi River after the Civil War, lured by the promise of land waiting for them in Kansas. All they had to do was get to St. Louis and trains would be ready to take them to the farmsteads.
Needless to say, no trains awaited them in St. Louis. Some of the migrants were able to book passage on boats headed up the Missouri to Kansas City (or had passage booked for them by locals who weren't keen on their remaining in St. Louis).
When they got to Kansas City, however, it was the same story. No transport waiting for them, nor any evidence that there was land ready for them. But there were some Blacks who had gotten their hands on land in Kansas through the Homestead Act, and some of them made their way to west-north-central Kansas, where they founded a town called Nicodemus in 1877.
According to this Wikipedia article on the community, Kansas held special appeal to many freed Blacks because of the actions of anti-slavery firebrand John Brown, who hailed from the state. (Those of you who are or were fans of the rock band Kansas may recall that the cover of their debut album featured a painting of Brown in a Moses-like pose.)
Kansas may not have had a huge Black population, but it had a non-trivial one. Don't forget whose Board of Education the Browns sued. One of those Black Kansans was my mother, born in Omaha and raised in the small northeast Kansas town of Horton, where she graduated high school in 1948. Horton being too small to segregate its schools, she got educated in mostly white environments all the way through college — she was the first Black woman to get both a BS in Nursing (1954) and an MS in Nursing (1970) from the University of Kansas.
What does the OP mean by “they don’t have Black representation?” I can understand the concept of a lack of national cognizance regarding different cities’ proportions of Black residents, but how do they not have representation if they live there and vote?
Maybe I’m way off as to what the OP means, but I feel Columbia, SC, is an example of a city and metro with quite a significant Black population that perhaps isn’t on the radar screen nationally, but that has a lot of representation on city and county councils, as well as in the state house and in Congress.
I only just now discovered this thread, and maybe someone already talked about Columbia. I perused the posts, but not all of them by a large measure.
As I continue to read this thread, I still haven’t seen Columbia, SC, mentioned. That in itself speaks to the lack of national cognizance regarding the size and power of the Black population there, both in the city of Columbia and Richland County.
The central business district’s Main Street has plaques on every block telling the story of Blacks, and effectively the Black experience, throughout the city’s history. Also, while poverty is certainly a problem among Black residents there, there is a sizable Black middle class in Columbia of legal professionals, educators and entrepreneurs.
Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Savannah, Tallahassee, Greensboro, Durham, Charlotte
Greensboro, Durham and Charlotte are very associated lol
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
