Never Forget That Streetcar History Is Racist

Here at TKC we love inconvenient facts. 

Moreover, we believe that the smartest local denizens of the discourse should be able to understand a multifaceted view of any & every local issue. 

Accordingly . . .

Often in discussions with local transit activists they point to the Golden Age of Kansas City when streetcars were the main mode of transportation and horses took dumps right on the street. 

And so we share something to consider about the dreadful streetcar era in the US so that we don't get carried away with sentimentality:

"Between 1900 and 1910, in more than two dozen cities, African Americans tried to stem the tide of their exclusion from public life by taking the fight to the streets, boycotting streetcars that divided Black and white passengers."

More worthwhile history from a public social media post . . . 

"#OnThisDay in 1867: In one of the nation’s first sit-ins, a group of Black men boarded a “whites-only” streetcar in Charleston, South Carolina, sitting among the white passengers. The conductor ordered them to move. They stayed. The police ordered them to move. They stayed. The driver unhitched the horses and left the streetcar. Protests expanded beyond the single line, and police arrested 11. The continuing protests led Black residents to win the right to ride in the streetcars. Their victory expanded in June when the discrimination of railroads, horse-cars and steamboats were also banned. #onthisdayinhistory"

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Walk! The Streetcar Boycotts | Seizing Freedom

With white supremacist strategies for segregated societies solidifying in towns across America's South, Black people needed to respond in ways that would ensure the freedoms their predecessors had fought to codify into law remained available to them. Between 1900 and 1910, in more than two doze ...