One of the interesting unexpected benefits of my study of Negro League baseball the past several years has been my introduction to the Jazz District in Kansas City. Located not at the legendary 12th Street and Vine (which doesn’t exist) mentioned in the old song, but rather contained within a couple of blocks around 18th and Vine, are the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum, the Gem Theater, and several restaurants and music clubs.
I get the feeling there wasn’t a lot going on there when I was growing up during the 1970s and 1980s. But a revitalization effort and the birth of the baseball museum in the 1990s have made it a must-see in the city.
But as great a place as it is to visit as a tourist now, you get the clear indication that it’s nothing compared to what it once was. In The Soul of Baseball, about Kansas Citian Buck O’Neil, Joe Posnanski says so. Much as the historian in me treasures relics from the past, the jazz and baseball fan can’t escape the sense of emptiness that comes from thinking what this area must have been like at its most glorious peak. When you consider how hard it is to interest celebrities in the Midwest in this day and age, it’s nearly unfathomable that Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie and Joe Louis and Satchel Paige might all be found hanging out at one time in this vibrant hub.
It was just block or so from this epicenter that the Negro National League was formed in 1920, at the Paseo YMCA, which still stands and bears a giant mural of Buck O’Neil on the side.
I’m sure it was sad to O’Neil to see a place so important to blacks in Kansas City undergo such a decline. I know it’s sad to me, but I’m so glad that I can at least try to imagine what it once was. If you haven’t ever been, take a day to go visit the museums, get some food and take in some music. Then try to imagine a throng of people including Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Josh Gibson hanging out on the streets and in the clubs.
The Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library is sponsoring a community read of The Soul of Baseball. Pick up a copy and look for events to discuss the book together. If you don’t live in Topeka, write any comments about O’Neil and the book you would like in this blog.