Kansas City's Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home
Margie Carr
University Press of Kansas
Margie Carr’s extraordinary, century-old history of one city block whose residents shaped the changing status of Black people in Kansas City and built the social and economic institutions that supported the city’s Black community during the first half of the 20th century.
While introducing the reader to the remarkable individuals who lived on Montgall Avenue, Carr also uses this neighborhood as a microcosm of the changing nature of discrimination in 20th-century America. Today, the 2400 block of Montgall Avenue is situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Kansas City. The attitudes and policies that contributed to the neighborhood’s changing environment paint a more complete—and disturbing—picture of the role that race continues to play in America’s story.