(gentle inspiring music) - My good friend Leon Dixon, one of the founders of the W.E.B.

DuBois Learning Center, has often quoted Coach Stan Wright, the first African American track coach of a US national team.

"A relay race is lost or won based upon how they pass the baton."

I am Carl Boyd, an urban educator since 1964.

I am honored to present this very special series, "Passing The Baton."

In this series, we are highlighting the accomplishments of Kansas City history makers, as they share their stories with this generation's baton takers.

Enjoy.

- Tell me about the neighborhood you grew up in.

- There was a small neighborhood, between 55th and 53rd Street, between Prospect and Waldron, and it's a pocket of black folks.

And they came there from everywhere.

(gentle inspiring music fades) My great-grandfather was from Alabama, my grandfather was from Mississippi.

There were people there from Texas, Arkansas, and they found their way to that neighborhood because there were jobs there.

They were within walking distance of the mines, and so they created a community there.

I always knew I was safe.

I don't care what time of the day or night, and I'm using that liberally, 'cause when the streetlights came on, I had to come home.

I knew every single person who lived in that area, and they all knew me.

They knew my grandparents.

My grandmother was the barber, she was also the midwife.

So, she delivered most of the children there.

My mother was a nurse.

My father and grandfather, they worked at what was then called Sheffield Steel.

So they all had different jobs, but they all belonged together.

There were three churches in that small area, and the colored school, the Phillis Wheatley School, was there too.

It's changed drastically.

One of the things that happened was that the city or the state decided they were going to put in the South Midtown Freeway, and they put it right through the middle of the neighborhood.

And it took them 30 years, after they moved people out to put the highway in.

So to me, that feels like something more deliberate, a more deliberate way of breaking up the space, of separating the blackness from each other.

But, the neighborhood was never the same.

They came through and they destroyed that community.

- Now, how do you think that change impacted you?

- I really wanted to go to Wheatley school.

Everybody I knew went to Wheatley.

But when it was time for me to go to school, it was past the Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas decision.

So, I had to go to Graceland.

I went to a predominantly white institution, and they didn't know what to do with us, and we didn't know what to do with them, and I didn't want to be there.

So, almost daily I was sent to the principal's office, and what I was doing was helping the other kids.

This was something new for us, and we were surrounded by white folks, and we wanted to make sure that we were represented well.

So we would check each other's papers before we turned them in, and the teachers resented that.

But, we wanted to make sure that it was perfect.

We were in a strange land with strange people, but it always had that sense of racial pride, and that I am a symbol of the race for my community, for that neighborhood, for all of those people when I was growing up who had said, "Carma, you're so smart," or, "Carma, you're going to do this."

And I had a, a yearning, to make sure that they would be proud of me.

So I worked really hard to make sure that I did well and that other people did well.

That was during the late '60s and '70s, when it wasn't unusual to be a first.

You know?

To be the first negro, the first black person in a position.

And that was quite a burden to carry.

And that's still happening now.

We're still talking about busting through glass ceilings and those kinds of things, because the war isn't over.

And it was a war.

I remember as a sophomore in high school, I worked at Blue Valley Federal Savings and Loan, which doesn't exist any longer.

And a woman, who actually lived two doors up the street from where my grandmother moved after she was displaced, worked there.

And one day she said, "I don't understand it.

What is it that you people want?"

So I composed myself, took deep breaths, and said, "The same thing white people want."

And I didn't understand why she couldn't understand that, you know?

Why is that different for you and your son than for my mother and her children?

In my professional career as a college professor, I taught at a PWI, a predominantly white institution, and we constantly fought that.

We had a multicultural center, so the people of color, any color, all colors, and also for gender identification, and immigrant status, so that they would feel comfortable, because we haven't torn down those walls yet.

(gentle inspiring music) And I've seen that as my mission.

And it all stems from coming from that neighborhood, from people who constantly told me, "You're smart, you're good, you're going to do good things, and we're so proud of you."

Many times I have people tell me, "No, you didn't.

Black folks didn't live south of 27th Street."

Yes we did, yes we did.

And I grew up on 55th Street, and that's a good little hike from 27th Street.

But that place is the culmination of the history of black America.

From those first steps on diasporic soil, 'til today.

And it can be centered right there, on 54th Street with that community.

(gentle inspiring music continues) (gentle inspiring music fades) (logo whooshes) (logo echoes)