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A house on Steptoe street from 1940. One and a half stories with a triangle roof and a man with a tax assessment sign in front.

Steptoe Lives

Steptoe Lives is a community initiative dedicated to preserving the memory of the Steptoe neighborhood, a historically black enclave in Westport, Missouri. With origins in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Steptoe gradually condensed into a black neighborhood defined by close-knit communal relations and middle class living. Though Westport itself became increasingly segregated, especially with the creation of Country Club Plaza just a few blocks south, Steptoe remained a vibrant neighborhood through the 1960s and into the 1970s. After that period, the expansion of St. Luke’s Hospital gradually broke up the community.

Steptoe Lives is determined to commemorate this space and the people who lived there. Working in partnership with KCMC, the Mellon foundation, and the City of Kansas City, Steptoe Lives will design an outdoor exhibit at the renovated Dr. Jeremiah Cameron Park near the original Steptoe neighborhood. This exhibit will feature artwork, historical interpretation, and oral histories to help the area remember this vibrant part of their past.

Additionally, Steptoe Lives will construct a website dedicated to the neighborhood and its history. In particular, both the website and the outdoor exhibit will focus on the major institutions that built Steptoe and helped it thrive for so long. The churches founded in the aftermath of the Civil War, St. James Missionary Baptist (still standing) and St. Luke’s AME church (torn down in 2003) were anchors in the community. Nothing, however, was more important than the Penn School, one of the first permanent schools for black children west of the Mississippi. This school, closed after desegregation in the 1950s, educated generations of Steptoe residents.

This project also seeks to preserve the living memory of the neighborhood. Part of Steptoe Lives’ goals is to record and post oral histories from the surviving community members. These glimpses into the past will serve as a foundation point for further research into an important black community as well as a reminder of how spaces have changed in Kansas City.

Sanborn Fire insurance map of the blocks that made up the Steptoe area. Steptoe is in the middle at 43rd st. terrace. 43rd street on the north, broadway on the east, Jefferson on the west, and 44th street on the south.

Photos from the Missouri Valley Special Collections