Martin Luther King Jr. in Kansas City - Clio

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1. Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport

Built in 1927, this small municipal airport was once deemed the “Air Hub of America.” After nearly losing U.S. Army services that were operated from a small airport located several miles out of city limits, Chamber of Commerce president Lou Holland encouraged a new airport that could also serve as an airmail station and aid in the city’s booming economy. Leaders decided that the empty field on the peninsula at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers was an ideal location because of its proximity to downtown and rail transportation. Famed aviator Charles Lindbergh dedicated Municipal Airport on August 17, 1927. The airport served as a base of operations for Kansas City-based Trans World Airlines and offered commercial air service until Kansas City International Airport was built in 1972. The airport was renamed in 2002 in honor of prominent Kansas Citian Charles Wheeler and serves private and small business traffic.

2. Kansas City Municipal Auditorium

The Municipal Auditorium, nicknamed the Municipal, is a historic event center in Kansas City. The Art Deco structure was built in the 1930s as part of a Ten Year Plan to revive the city’s economy with construction jobs and new public buildings. Over the decades it has hosted many community and national events, including national basketball championship games and two speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, the historic structure is part of the overall Kansas City Convention Center Complex.

3. Temple B'nai Jehudah (1957-2000)

Congregation B'nai Jehudah operated from this location between 1957 to 2000, making the congregation's fourth home. The temple design resembled a tent and featured a new ark, LaFarge stained glass taken from the previous building on Linwood, and a 16-foot-tall statue of Moses. The sanctuary was finished a decade later and had the capacity for 700 people, much more than the congregation's previous temples could accommodate. This temple was in use for over forty years, but as more people moved to Johnson County, so did B'nai Jehudah, moving to their fifth and current location in 2000. The Holmes Road Temple was later torn down and University Academy now stands where the synagogue used to be.

4. Sumner High School

Sumner High School was built in 1905 as the city’s first racially segregated high school for African Americans. The first public high school in the area, Kansas City, Kansas High School (KCKHS) had been integrated, and about 5% of its student population was Black. An unrelated homicide in 1904 led proponents of racial segregation to bypass a state law that permitted segregation at the elementary and high school levels in larger cities but required high schools to be integrated owing to the costs of maintaining separate schools. Sumner High School quickly established itself as one of the best high schools in the state, due to outstanding faculty and a high level of academic achievement by students. The first Sumner High School was replaced by a new building in 1939, partially using funds from the Public Works Administration program of the Great Depression era. In 1958, Martin Luther King spoke at Sumner and predicted the end of segregation. Today, the shcool operates as Sumner Academy of Arts and Science and is consistently rated one of the best high schools in the country.

5. St. Stephen Baptist Church and Reverend John Wesley Williams Statue

Currently located in a building on the northwest corner of Truman Road and The Paseo, St. Stephen Baptist Church has long been a fixture of the Black community in Kansas City. Founded in 1903, St. Stephen Baptist Church was created by Reverend James Wesley Hurst on a street corner in the neighborhood of Belvidere Hollow. Since its inception, the congregation has weathered fires, changes in leadership, and multiple changes of venue before arriving at its current location. After a 1938 fire consumed the previous location, the congregation purchased and remodeled a dance hall on the northwest corner of The Paseo and Truman Road, where they have remained since 1945. In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. made the first of his six visits to Kansas City by addressing a crowd of around 750 people at this church. Across the street from the building, on an island in the middle of The Paseo, there is a statue of notable Baptist and civil rights leader Reverend John Wesley Williams, who served as pastor of St. Stephen from 1944 to 1983. Though the church has continued to experience ups and downs in recent years, the efforts of Reverend Williams and others throughout the history of the church have made sure that St. Stephen will remain a landmark of the 18th and Vine Area.

This Tour is a Digital Story Map.

Martin Luther King Jr. in Kansas City

Created by Black Archives of Mid-America on November 15th 2022, 9:35:39 pm.

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Description

This digital story map includes each of the places where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in Kansas City Missouri and Kansas City Kansas in chronological order. King's first speech in Kansas City was delivered at St. Stephen Baptist Church on April 11, 1957. He addressed a mass meeting called by the NAACP at Sumner High School on June 20, 1958, and addressed a crowd of four hundred at Congregation B’nai Jehudah in 1961. King spoke twice at Municipal Auditorium. His first speech at the auditorium was during the annual convention of members of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., in the fall of 1961, and the second was an address before eight thousand people at the Festival of Faith in November of 1962. King spoke briefly to supporters in a lounge at Municipal Airport in January 1968 before traveling to deliver a major address at Kansas State University. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

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