City Divided

This study addresses the emergence of ghettos alongside the formative issues of race, gender, segregation, and the origins of white ideologies in the urban Midwest. 1930s Kansas City maintained a system of racial exclusion by claiming that segregation was necessary to prevent racial violence. At the same time, a new perception emerged among white liberals that inte- gration would produce a better society by transforming human character. After World War II, African American organizations devised demonstration strategies that were successful in laying a foundation for desegregating public accommodations in Kansas City. Black and white activists nonetheless failed to dismantle the systems of spatial exclusion and inequitable law enforcement or to eradicate the racial ideologies that underlay those systems.