Blacks Have Endowed KC

Three-part article about three prominent African Americans from Kansas City's past: Judge Carl Johnson, Minnie Crosthwaite, and Rev. D.A. Holmes. Carl Johnson was "the first black elected to a judgeship in Kansas City" and "the Division Four judge of the Kansas City Municipal Court" from 1955 to his death in 1960. He was a native of Georgia who moved to Kansas City as a lawyer. Minnie Crosthwaite was the founder of a long-standing "fashion show to benefit the all-black Wheatley-Provident Hospital" starting in 1921. She was born in Nashville in 1872 and moved to Kansas City about 1890 as a science teacher, before becoming a social worker involved in helping the new hospital "pay off its mortgage, purchase a new X-ray machine, modernize its kitchen and buy an adjoining house as a home for nurses in training." Crosthwaite's shows featured a children's parade followed by an adult parade. D.A. Holmes (1877-1972) was "a well-respected leader in the black community" and "known for lashing out against the Pendergast machine, calling it dishonest government that only bribed blacks for support." Rev. Holmes was a native of Macon, Missouri and moved to Kansas City, Kansas, in 1914 as builder of the Metropolitan Church and a civil rights activist. In 1921 he became a minister at the Vine Street Baptist Church and later moved the church to Paseo and renamed it the Paseo Baptist Church.