African American schools located outside the historic 18th & Vine community seem to many as an oddity, but in fact, they comprised numerically a larger group than those clustered about the center of the neighborhood. Enrollments in the outlying schools varied widely however.

Penn School was one of the older African American schools in that it originated in the Westport School District when that entity was entirely separate from Kansas City just as was its city government. Prior to 1897, both jurisdictions—Westport City and Westport School district—operated as independent agencies.

The neighborhood around Penn School, located on a hilltop at 42nd & Pennsylvania and next to an 1880s streetcar line, was known as “Steptoe” to the south and west of the school site. Dating from the Civil War era, Steptoe [named for one of the streets running through it, now 43rd Terrace] was always an integrated neighborhood with almost all of Westport’s small Black population housed within its boundaries [west of St. Luke’s to Madison, from 42nd Terrace south to 45th, generally.

Since Missouri schools had been segregated from the end of the Civil War, Westport District operated Penn School to handle all children in grades 1-7 [later K-7] who lived within general walking distance of the site [overlooking today’s Embassy Suites from the north. When Westport was annexed by Kansas City in 1897, the two school district merged as well with Penn School retaining its responsibility to educate the African American children in the immediate neighborhood.

There was a larger African American community north of Westport that was served by Frederick Douglass School at 27th & Roanoke Road in another ethnically diverse neighborhood that included Irish, Mexican [after 1910] and African American children. This was actually a much larger neighborhood because Douglass School included a teacher for each grade, and occasionally included more than one class for a particular grade depending upon enrollments in a given year.

Douglass also housed a boys’ vocational class area which Penn School did not possess. Thus, much of the time in the early to mid-20th Century, older boys from Penn had to walk the almost two miles from close to 43rd Street at Penn to Douglass at 27th and what was then known as West Prospect Place. Needless to say, these young men would not have needed additional physical education classes to stay in shape.

All that does not mean that Penn School did not offer recreation and game-playing areas. In fact, the only remaining physical evidence of the existence of Penn School near the original site is a marker, placed by alumni, that is mounted on a stone projection near the intersection of 43rd & Broadway [J. C. Nichols Parkway] that commemorates the ball fields used by students at the school.

The old Westport-Dodson Interurban “dummy” line that operated a steam engine-drawn set of cars from Mill Street Station [today a shopping area adjacent to Southwest Trafficway] to Dodson at 87th & Prospect] ran on an elevation just west of the ball field and, at the upper level, the school itself. As many will recall, a quite significant overpass existed at 47th & Broadway that crossed the intersection at an angle.

Other outlying African American Schools [not near 18th & Vine] in the Kansas City District in 1913 included Booker T. Washington, 30th & Myrtle; B. K. Bruce at 14th & Jackson; W. L. Garrison at 4th & Forest; Lincoln Elementary at 11th & Campbell; Charles Sumner between 9th & St. Louis on Wyoming; and Phillis Wheatley on 55th between Prospect & Montgall along with the previously mentioned Douglass school. Garrison, Lincoln [later renamed W. W. Yates School], and Douglass were the largest of these outlying schools in numbers of classrooms and teachers.

The schools located near 18th & Vine in 1913 included Crispus Attucks at 19th & Woodland; the “Negro Truant School” at the workhouse on Vine Street; Wendell Phillips school at Vine & Howard; and Lincoln High School at 19th & Tracy.

All these institutions served the city and the community faithfully for many decades. Penn School enrolled its last classes in the 1960s and disappeared from its site shortly after. Now it, and several others, exist fondly only in the memories of their devoted graduates.

Bill Worley, Instructor in History, MCC-Blue River