Concluding weeks of KCMO controversy regarding the legacy of an American icon. Check the community chat this evening . . .
The Library, in collaboration with KCPT-Kansas City PBS and KSHB-41 Action News, examines the indelible episode and its aftermath in a two-pronged event marking its 50th anniversary. First is the premiere screening of the new documentary short '68: The Kansas City Race Riots, Then and Now, co-produced by KSHB and KCPT. Then, a panel discussion featuring Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II, Mayor Sly James, and former city council member and longtime community activist Alvin Brooks addresses the lessons learned from the violent chapter of history, from the role of policing to the value of protest.
Joining Cleaver and Brooks on the panel: Clarence Gibson, the last Kansas City police officer at the time of the unrest who remains on the force; Linda Spence, a Central High School student in 1968; and Southeast Missouri State University historian Joel Rhodes, who has extensively researched the episode. KCPT’s Nick Haines moderates.
Take a look:
You decide . . .
Still fighting for scraps a half a century later.
ReplyDeleteThat's inspiring!
Killing for chicken more likely!
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that we're just getting over the white flight that nearly destroyed Kansas City years later.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, a lot more people are coming back to the city and leaving the suburbs empty and barren. That's exactly what they deserve.
Only millenials are moving into the city. They can’t afford rent in the burbs.
ReplyDeleteOnce they get robbed or start having children they will leave too.
The city is NOT sustainable. They can’t keep up the streets. They don’t have the money to fix the water and sewage problems. They give away the tax base to corporations. Soon there will be nothing left to scrap or steal and that too will move even more into the suburbs.
Thanks Sly and the former mayors for lowsy leadership.
Just millennials moving in? have you seen those high rise apartments? 2000 a month rent average. Older 30 and 40 somethings. KC is taking back way more residents from Kansas. The border war is over. Brownback lost!
Deleteproof?
Deleteyou forgot to use the term momentum.
Urban renewal.
ReplyDeleteWhite flight started around that time when white businesses were burnt out in the riots and white kids left in the flotsam got beat up and learned how to run fast, home from school.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm noticing in KC is a really dated method of thinking in terms of black and white. Look at the new people coming to downtown and paying high rent at One, Two and now Three light. They're of Indian heritage, they are single, professional and successful women and, yes, they are high-paid African-Americans.
ReplyDeleteThe professional class is creating a new world downtown while KC is dwelling over history and looking how to resolve struggles that are a half a century old.
I'm not saying that isn't important, but let's also look at the future and give respect to the people who are making Downtown and successful and vibrant.
Read one comment about this that made a lot of sense,
ReplyDeleteWhere is the other side of the story?
There are some wild allegations made here against the police and people who owned property at the time but I don't see their voices represented in the documentary or the discussion. Really a shame that we can't have a conversation that involves police who might even talk about how so much has changed since that day 50 years ago. Instead, just more anti-police rhetoric from the media and our elected officials.
We all, now, at the behest of our Progressive masters, celebrate dysfunction, violence and the necrosis we all know is coming, but refuse to acknowledge.
ReplyDeleteRace riots and race hustlers are the new American heroes.
The Progressive Monolith, the 4th Estate, the Deep State, Academe, the Entertainment State, Google, Facebook and all Social Media in conjunction with the tip of the spear, the DNC, bend us all to the will of the "Metropolis" now necrotically attached to our lungs and heart, through our wind pipes like a fuckin Goddamned Alien on our face, incessantly sucking the life out of the Democracy that more and more, "Dies in Darkness".
The bedrock, the stanchion, the pillars of this insanity is "Civil Rights" and accusations of "Racism". This go to excuse which is the catalyst for all Progressive/Fascist power, stems from the end of this metaphorical gun barrel.
Sick.
The White Flight that destroyed Kansas City was caused by "School desegregation", period. When the Federal Judges took over the KCMO School System, it was converted from an educational organization to a means of spending money. Non-Black children became "tokens" to be shuttled around the City in order to establish the "diversity goals" arbitrarily being set up from Downtown, with their needs and their parents concerns disregarded completely.
ReplyDeleteWe personally experienced this-trying at the time to locate a house in what is now called the "Old Northeast". Under the plan announced at the time, our (white) child would have attended Kindergarten in the Old Northeast, then be bussed to another school for 1st and perhaps 2nd, then moved from school to school as the need for racial balance required. e had no say in the process.
As a result, we moved our search four miles North, bought a house that was easily equivalent to anything we had seen available in Old Northeast (for at least $10,000 less) two blocks from a School in the North KC District, and our child went to the same School K-5, then to the same Middle School 6-8, finishing with 4 years at the same High School.
We are seeing the same phenomenon now, with families of all races (and genders) leaving the "wonderfulness" of Downtown leasing to move North and buy suburban houses that provide more room (at a fraction of the cost), good Schools, convenient, close-by amenities, and easy commutes to their jobs.
It seems that they are finding that Kids and Responsibilities don't mix with the soullessness, selfishness and barrenness of the "urban lifestyle" that the "Downtown Desert" offers.
Yeah 50 years ago my 3rd cousin got a spanking in school. GTF on with life.
ReplyDelete