People, pride and promise
The Kansas African American Museum, formerly the venerable old Calvary Baptist Church was once the cornerstone of Wichita's vibrant black community. It was built in 1917 when the congregation's leaders worked nights and weekends -separate and apart from their jobs to finish the church. That community featured restaurants, businesses and homes. It hosted jazz artists, negro league baseball stars, and was the home of America's first African American Academy Award winner and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s lawyer among others.
This building stands as a monument to human endurance as well as to dignity. The people who worshiped here endured painful racial segregation and fought those conditions with dignity.
That's why when Calvary Baptist Church relocated in 1972, Doris Kerr Larkins and others fought to protect this building from urban renewal's wrecking ball. Larkins and many others launched the First National Black Historical Society Museum in 1973. By 1993, the building joined the National Historic Register of Historic Places and in 1997, became the Kansas African American Museum. It's that legacy that we preserve here, while building a new one.
The Kansas African American Museum wants to build on this great legacy in a new building located on prime riverfront property in Wichita's museum district. Our new building will provide the space to adequately tell the story of the people, pride, and promise of Kansas African Americans. For all of its history and all of its symbolism, our current location isn't befitting the dignity of the proud people who built and preserved this building.
Help us to create a new legacy for future generations befitting the legacy Kerr and others left for us.
Vision Statement
We will be the premier place where the community comes to learn about or tell the Kansas African American story.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Kansas African American Museum is to tell the stories of the African American experience in Kansas in order to educate the past and inspire a hope for the future.
