The New York City Library Digital Collections
A crowd gathered for the 1914 cornerstone laying at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri.
Stories of the most famous African Americans from Kansas City are well told, but the work of many more community members often goes unrecognized.
When it comes to the history of the African American community in Kansas City, almost everyone knows the big names people like jazz great Charlie Parker or baseball legend Buck O’Neil, who are both memorialized in countless ways around the metro.
“But that’s just a small number of the people who worked together and individually to build life and culture for Black Americans,” said Carmaletta Williams, executive director of the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City.