- 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'm 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.

- So I'm curious to know what led you to deciding that you needed to dedicate most of your life to improving your community?

- We moved to Kansas City in 1962, and I was 12, so I really got started then.

My grandma used to make us, well, we were voluntold, to help out with Freedom Incorporated, and we learned how to canvas, we learned how to knock on doors, how to talk to people about who to vote for.

It was during the civil rights era, and grandmother made sure that we attended all those meetings (laughs).

She was very social (giggles).

- That's good.

My grandma was not quite as social.

(Brian and Diane laughing) - Your grandma raised the Dickens.

- She did.

- And she ran for office.

Did you know that?

- Yeah, she ran for city council in the '70s.

- Yup.

- I know she ran as a Republican, not because she's a Republican, but they were the only party that would have her at the time.

I think about it all the time, like, I think about how much she wanted it.

- [Diane] Yeah.

- How much good she could have done on city council.

And it relates to kind of the work that I'm doing now, I'm kind of trying to carry on what she was doing.

And I feel like if I help people on council, then I'm kind of helping her.

- Absolutely.

She's smiling at you right now, Brian, because you are doing some stuff and, really, in ways that she probably never would've imagined.

And I'm privileged to be one of the witnesses of her legacy.

- What's the first cause you ever took up as an organizer?

- When my son got shot at 14 years old, and somebody called me on the phone and said, "Oh God, Diane, you live in that terrible neighborhood!

Where are you moving to?"

I said, "I'm moving to the moon.

I ain't going nowhere."

And I think that really jumped off my confidence that I could do and make a change where I lived.

- I'm also curious, was there a specific event or thing that brought you to founding KC Tenants?

- There was two incidences that happened.

Tara Raghuveer came to town to give her presentation at the health department and she was statistician, all I knew is that we were gonna go hear about statistics on evictions in Kansas City.

And, it was my birthday.

And I walked in the room and there was no place to sit, and I said, "Well, it's my birthday, where am I gonna sit?"

And she with her smarty mouth said, "Sit over there, birthday girl!"

And I said, "Well, how dare..." You know?

So, I disliked her from the beginning, I've loved her ever since.

Everything that I've said for the 40 years that I've been screaming about housing and unfair housing, she had it in data, and data is the language of today.

When she called me on the phone and said, "Let's meet," I said, "Well, okay."

We met on 27th in Holmes at a restaurant, and it got me started.

The day that we had our town hall meeting at the Plaza Library and talked about evictions, and Tara had a lineup of people on the panel that actually had gone through evictions.

And she said something to us then we always say it now is the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.

Consensus is a long drawn-out, arduous process.

But, once you've got everybody on board, we aren't geniuses on our own, but together, boy, we are geniuses when there's a group of us.

So, to take that genius that we have and come up with ideas of how to fix this problem that we all have alike, then we can all think of in terms of how we'd like for the world to be.

- At the time when I joined KC Tenants, I have been away for 15 years, and had no real ties to the community at that point outside of like my family.

And, so joining KC Tenants was like kind of putting some roots into the city.

Seeing you at that first meeting, you let me know that I was in the right place.

- Exactly where you needed to be.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- I didn't know what my place was in that space, but I knew I was in the right place.

- Yeah.

The one thing everyone should know about KC Tenants, well, there's two things.

First of all, we're not bullies.

(Brian and Diane laughing) But the other thing is that we're fighting for the good of all of Kansas City.

There's not a person within our group that doesn't love Kansas City the way that we all love Kansas City.

So listen to us and help us to be at that table when you make those decisions.

Nothing about us without us.

(soft orchestral music) (logo whooshing) (logo ding)