Quindaro

Members of the Whitney Singers performing gospel music in Kansas City.

Kansas City and the Roots of Black Gospel Music 

Kansas City has a rich and influential legacy when it comes to the development of Black gospel music. This is its largely untold story.

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Preservation workers at the Quindaro site.

Remembering Quindaro: ACLU of Kansas Shines New Light

The ACLU of Kansas has released a report urging people to study the history of the thriving, multiracial Quindaro township in Kansas City, Kansas.

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A map of the archaeological areas at the Quindaro site. (Brad Austin | Flatland)

6 Kansas City places with surprising ties to the civil rights movement

Today is a chance to reflect not just on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the history of civil rights in the United States but also the sometimes-forgotten role played by important places right here in Kansas City. Below are a few places to consider checking out to commemorate how far we’ve come…

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University of Washington Professor Quintard Taylor delivers lecture

Kansas’ Important Place in Black History

Today, Kansas is known as a deeply conservative state, but a historian reminded a Kansas City audience that the state actually has a long history of racial progressivism dating back even before its statehood. “There is no other state beyond Kansas whose history is so intertwined with the idea of African-American freedom, African-American liberation,” said…

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overgrown site

Resurrecting Quindaro

As Americans north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line debated slavery, a boomtown that sprouted from the scrub along the Missouri River emerged as one of the most unlikely bellwethers of the national mood in the run-up to the Civil War. That community was Quindaro, Kansas, and virtually overnight it became something of a prototype…

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