‘This is the truth’: Explore art, history & culture at the Black Archives of Mid-America

Editor’s Note: This is story is part of “Kansas City: Like a Local,” a series where Kansas Citians recommend their favorite things to do in our region. It’s part of our Guide to the City of Fountains, get the guide delivered to your inbox by signing up here!

Kansas City’s historic 18th and Vine District is a center of Black culture. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum celebrates Black excellence and sportsmanship in baseball, music lovers can learn about Black culture’s influence on jazz at the American Jazz Museum and the Mutual Musicians Foundation, and Arthur Bryant’s carries on the barbecue legacy of The King of Ribs.

“But we have it all. We have it all right here in the Black Archives,” says Dr. Carmaletta Williams, CEO of The Black Archives of Mid-America.

The museum and archive, located at East 17th Terrace and Woodland Ave., houses an extensive collection of artifacts and records documenting all aspects of Black life in America including art, music, theater, military service, medicine, sports, religion, education, and community affairs.

It all started with Horace M. Peterson III, the founder of the archives. He came up with the idea to open a Black museum when he was in middle school. As Peterson got older, he started collecting things, storing them in the trunk of his car until he officially opened the museum in 1974.

He continued to collect objects, photographs and other documents throughout his life and even took classes at the Smithsonian to learn more about preservation and how to be an archivist. Over time, the Black Archives became a living museum where people from Kansas City and beyond donated their belongings to be preserved by the archives, and in doing so, they added their family stories to the historical record.

Today, the museum serves as an educational resource not just for visitors who want to learn more about Black culture, but for individuals who want to research their genealogy and scholars who want an accurate, honest depiction of Black history.

“We have had researchers from all over the world come here because we are that place that holds the key to that history,” says Williams.

Upstairs from the museum’s exhibits are the archives themselves where there are stacks of cataloged boxes, rows of magazines and books, files filled with documents and paperwork, and thousands of photographs. It’s a massive repository of artifacts and information that would be tricky to navigate unless you’re researching a specific topic, which is why access to the archives is available by appointment only.

There’s always something new to see at the Black Archives from revolving expositions and community art projects to events and social gatherings, but they have permanent exhibits as well.

The Women’s Basketball Association Hall explores the history of the WNBA. There’s also the main Kauffman Exhibition Hall, a permanent installation where you can read about the outstanding achievements of Black people who made their mark on the world throughout history.

Williams says celebrating moments of Black excellence is important, especially for young people to see. “We know that [young people] have been assaulted with all kinds of stories about what they’re supposed to be and what happens to them. Well, here we tell them a different story. This is the truth,” says Williams. “We come from a powerful people.”

Equally important to Williams and the staff working at the Black Archives, is sharing the more somber truths about Black life in America.

The Community Remembrance Project includes a display of jars filled with the soil from places where people were lynched. There’s also Lucy’s Cabin, where the once enslaved Lucy A. Willis lived and continued to live with her daughter after she had been freed. The cabin was brought to the museum from Trenton, Missouri by Peterson who reassembled what he could, which was only about a third of the cabin considering many of the old wooden beams were rotted.

Everything in the cabin from the table and chairs to the washtub and ringer all belonged to Willis, giving us an honest look into a Black woman’s life during the end of slavery through the beginning of the Reconstruction Era.

“We learn a story. We learn that people who were enslaved didn’t have completely pitiful lives,” says Williams. “They had births, they had baptisms, they had church services, they had parties, they had celebrations,” she continues, adding that, despite the horrors of slavery in America, enslaved people continued to create communities where they preserved their traditions and their heritages for generations.

“Even though there were abominable and horrific things that happened to people” says Williams, “it didn’t work. They didn’t just take it. They decided that they were going to thrive and survive and that they were going to build their own worlds, build their own cultures.”

There are still major steps we need to take to build a more equitable society but, according to Williams, we can take those steps, the first being to share the truth, which is the core mission of the Black Archives of Mid-America.

“We know that those are the stories, we have to tell it,” says Williams. “Because with that truth then we can advance, we can keep moving, we can all grow, we can understand who we are and why we are, and then we can move on. We can build something beautiful and something wonderful, but you have to know the truth first.”