An interpretive panel detailing Prairie Village’s early history of racist deed restrictions is on track for installation at Porter Park.
But not after city leaders and members of the public last week tussled over some of the proposed panel’s details, including whether Porter Park was the best location for it and whether some components of a final panel should be modified.
Ultimately, the Prairie Village City Council on Monday, Jan. 21, voted 7-2 to approve a $2,250 purchase for the interpretive panel.
Panel result of years of research
For the past four years, David Magariel, an attorney and member of the city’s diversity committee, has been researching and preparing text for the interpretive panel.
Magariel told the city council last week that he was inspired by the Equal Justice Initiative to pursue a public acknowledgment of Prairie Village’s “ugly history” with racist deed restrictions.
He said the interpretive panel intends to educate — not to blame — Prairie Village residents about what happened in the past, and also promote diversity in the present.
“I’ve heard from folks that they feel that this is blaming people who live here today,” Magariel said. “That is not the intent, and if folks want to read it, I don’t think anything in the panel is intending to make anyone feel bad about living here.”
The interpretive panel is one of several initiatives by the city’s diversity committee. Other such efforts include a celebration of Hispanic heritage, an annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event and multiple town halls and panels, including one about transgender rights two years ago.
Councilmembers Terry O’Toole and Lori Sharp cast the dissenting votes against the panel purchase. Councilmembers Inga Selders, Tyler Agniel and Nick Reddell were absent.
Racist covenants and deed restrictions were common in the early and middle part of the 20th Century in Johnson County as suburban communities were established and expanded, driven in large part by white residents leaving Kansas City, Missouri.
Racist deed language, specifically barring Black and Jewish homebuyers, has remained on property documents in Prairie Village and other Johnson County cities like Roeland Park for decades but has been unenforceable on a federal level since the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer.
Last year, Gov. Laura Kelly signed a law that makes racist covenants unenforceable at the state level. This law also offers homeowners and cities ways to finally remove racist covenants from property records.
‘Inherited Exclusion’ — A look at the panel
Magariel said that Andrew Gustafson, the Johnson County Museum curator of interpretation, reviewed the interpretive panel before it went to the city council.
Gustafson was the project lead on Johnson County Museum’s Redlined: Cities, Suburbs and Segregation, an award-winning exhibit in 2023 that told the history of legalized residential segregation with a particular focus on Johnson County and the Kansas City region.
Here’s a look at what the Porter Park interpretive panel — entitled “Inherited Exclusion” — features:
- Racist rules excluded Black people from living on the land that is now Porter Park, even though homes were never part of the plan for this piece of land.
- A brief history of how famed Kansas City developer J.C. Nichols and the J.C. Nichols Corporation founded Prairie Village and “pioneered a system” that excluded certain groups of people from owning a home in the city.
- The way the federal government, including the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, reinforced exclusionary restrictions in cities by making it more difficult for people to get loans in integrated areas.
- Finally, the panel ends with the city’s current population demographics. As of 2020, nearly 90% of people in Prairie Village are white, according to U.S. Census data.
A full view of the interpretive panel, which will be 24 inches high and 42 inches wide, can be found in the embedded document below on page 96. (There are some changes being made to the final version of the panel based on city council discussion, including matching the colors to the updated park signage.)
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Open in new tab Members of the public who commented largely supported panel
Residents like Jennifer Brown and Ann Melia spoke in favor of the interpretive panel at Porter Park.
Melia asked the city council to support the interpretive panel because, as someone who has lived in the city for 36 years, she was shocked to find out about the history of racist deed restrictions.
“This is why I feel it is imperative that we teach Prairie Village residents and others in the greater Kansas City community about these ugly practices in our past,” Melia said. “We must bring these practices to light so that future generations understand the true history of our city, the community of Kansas City and the United States.”
Resident Leon Patton was the only resident who spoke against the interpretive panel, pointing out that the proposed panel includes an image of a historic news clipping that “singles out” a specific address of a redlined home. He said that raises privacy concerns for present-day residents who may live at that address.
He also said the panel fails to explain continued consequences of redlining.
“If all you want to do is shame people, it’s fine as it is, that’s good enough for you, then approve it,” Patton said.
City council debates contents of panel
Councilmember Lori Sharp also raised concerns about the specific address being depicted in the panel.
She said she was “uncomfortable with putting someone’s address that has nothing to do with this” on the panel in a public park.
Sharp made a motion to blur out the portion of the newspaper clipping image that showed the address on the panel.
The city council approved that motion in a 8-1 vote, with Councilmember Ron Nelson casting the dissenting vote. Nelson said to blur a piece of a newspaper advertisement is to “change history.”
Sharp also asked if anyone reached out to the woman whose family is the namesake of Porter Park. Sharp said it “might be a sensitive thing to do” to get the family’s blessing for installing the panel.
Councilmember Terry O’Toole said there is at least one resident who believes there is incorrect information in the panel, and proposed publishing the panel document on the city website for three to six months to get feedback.
Councilmember Ian Graves said the diversity committee relied on experts, like Gustafson, to review the panel. Graves asked why the city should post this particular panel online for review when that is not the practice for other types of panels.
Councilmember Chi Nguyen, who has publicly talked about her own Vietnamese heritage and served on the diversity committee before being appointed to the city council, said the council discussed at length how residents would feel about the panel, rather than how people of color would feel about the panel.
Nguyen said that when she first moved to Prairie Village in 2019, it was difficult to find people who looked like her at her children’s school, restaurants or neighborhood. Then, she met former police chief Byron Roberson, who is Black and now Johnson County Sheriff, and told him that Prairie Village “was the least diverse place I’d ever lived.”
“I think — and I can’t speak for someone that is Black, I can only speak for my experience — that if I were to come into a park and I would see this panel, I would feel that this was a safer place to live, a more welcoming place to live, and somewhere where they admit to what has happened in history and they want to move forward,” Nguyen said.
“Yes, it may make people feel uncomfortable, but I think we should also look at how it would make people feel that were affected and that are still affected today,” Nguyen added.
Go deeper: Watch the city council’s entire discussion about the interpretive panel at Porter Park online here starting at 1:04:03.
