“By Fair Means”: Community Building in Kansas City, 1890–1919

While Black women’s history is a rigorous and rich field, there is still much to uncover. The information available on the lives of Black women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is readily available if we know where to look. It is no longer beyond the scope of imagination to see Black women of the past as managers of their own destinies. In Kansas City, the legacies left behind by Black women helped shape the city as we know it today. These women created and funded community-based self-help programs that laid the foundation for cultural centers, institutions of learning, and newspapers that kept the community informed and connected. Josephine Silone Yates, Anna H. Jones, Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry, Rosabelle Douglass Sprague Jones, Minnie L. Crosthwaite, and Ada Crogman Franklin were nationally recognized clubwomen. They set out to bring the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs motto, “lifting as we climb,” home to their newly established community.