Kansas City 'Redlining' Exhibit Attempts To Explain Systemic Racism

The history of this cowtown can't be denied and, for better and worse, the racist past of Kansas City has increasingly been explored by activists, artists and researchers. 

As we noted yesterday. All of this seems to be leading up to a very real national discussion about reparations for slavery and segregation.

Here's a recent bit of creative show & tell . . .

Redlining is the systematic disinvestment of certain neighborhoods on the basis of race.

Private and public organizations redlined more than 50% of the Kansas City metropolitan area in the 1930s, meaning they viewed those areas as a poor investment because of the Black, Jewish, Italian or other ethnic groups who lived in the areas. Areas in Brookside, or along Ward Parkway, and across the state line in Johnson County, Kansas, where the population was mostly white, were green or blue-lined, meaning banks saw investments in those areas as worthwhile.

Redlining became illegal in the 1960s, but decades later the effects of those decisions remain obvious in both the city and suburbs.

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

Two Americas: Temporary exhibit highlights how redlining shaped Kansas City, suburbs

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Michael Toombs started gravitating towards art in the sixth grade. A program at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, led by local artist Matthew Monks, helped Toombs escape the realities he faced living with his siblings and single mother in a public housing complex in Kansas City, Missouri.