NAACP

Interview with civil rights activist and Kansas City Public Schools board member Fletcher Daniels. Daniels discusses his family and early life and education in Muskogee, Oklahoma, being drafted into the army, and moving to Kansas City to work as a postal clerk. He also discusses Kansas City's Black community, his memories of Ruth Kerford and the Community Committee for Social Action, staging demonstrations for integration of downtown department stores, his memories of the protests after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his experience in leadership of the local NAACP, and his work with and as part of the KCPS board, including his thoughts on school integration.

Interview with pharmacist and former Missouri state representative James McKinley Neal. Neal discusses his path to Kansas City and the pharmacy business, his service in the state legislature from 1946 to 1964, his sponsorship of civil rights bills, being elected by a primarily white electorate, and witnessing and promoting the desegregation of many public facilities during that time. He notes that he was the first Black person permitted to stay in a white hotel in the state of Missouri, having previously been required to stay in Lincoln University dormitories while in Jefferson City. He also discusses the accomplishments of his family members, his involvement in the Urban League and Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, and shares thoughts about the Model Cities program, employment, and education.

Interview with educator and community leader Dr. Jeremiah Cameron. Cameron discusses his early life, attending school with Charlie Parker and other notable classmates, his experience as a student and educator at Lincoln High School, earning his bachelors degree at Indiana University and graduate degrees at the University of Chicago and Michigan State University, serving in the Air Force, and experiences of racism and segregation in those settings. He also shares opinions on the state of Kansas City schools and colleges, past and present, Black arts and literature, and discusses his experience as the public relations director of the local NAACP.

Partial interview with Dr. Norman P. Forester. Dr. Forester discusses his involvement in Black professional organizations, his time in the Army reserves, his wife and children, and the children attending predominantly white schools. He also discusses his medical practice, including time spent with patients, fees, hiring practices, and working with his uncle.

Interview with UMKC English professor Robert Farnsworth. Farnsworth discusses his family background, his early life in Detroit, attending high school as a white student and athlete in an integrated school in the early 1940s, studying English at the University of Michigan (later getting graduate degrees from the University of Connecticut and Tulane University), developing his sense of politics and racial justice, his involvement with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), his experiences with other activists including A. Cecil Williams, Bruce Watkins and Leon Jordan, and the friction around white participation in CORE. He also discusses shifting away from CORE involvement, the importance of teaching Black literature, covering Black culture in his published work, obtaining the papers of the poet and academic Melvin Tolson, and hosting the 1973 African and Caribbean Writers Conference at UMKC.