Roland Street was once one of the few areas in Jefferson City where black families could build and live in new housing.
The Jefferson City Housing Authority designed the neighborhood in the early 1960s because there were few modern houses where black families could relocate.
So it was a sore prick to the community of Roland Street when Jefferson City Public Schools announced it was considering buying nine - mostly vacant - lots in the neighborhood.
Roland Street is just a block north of Jefferson City High School, where officials have been talking about the campus being suffocated for space.
When the lots on Marshall and Roland streets came up for sale and JCPS was approached to buy it for $206,500, Superintendent Larry Linthacum said the district had to at least consider the offer.
JCPS has yet to commit to a use for the land - which rests on a steep grassy knoll. But district officials have discussed using it to host an adult education program, as an alternative setting for students with behavioral issues or as a parking lot.
After the potential purchase was announced, an array of concerns flitted from residents during a community meeting and the district's board meeting Oct. 10. Residents said the area has been a trash dumping ground for years, and students speed through the streets and walk through their properties.
Some said they believe they'll eventually be pushed out of their neighborhood. If the district decides to buy these lots, more people may be encouraged to sell so the district could expand its reach further into the area.
Residents agreed they want to maintain the integrity of their neighborhood and would prefer to see the lots left vacant.
The history of Roland Street
In the midst of the Housing Authority's urban renewal project, America was on the cusp of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A few years before black people were allowed to share a restaurant booth with whites, the Jefferson City Housing Authority was devising a solution to build better housing for black families.
Neighborhoods in the east end of town on Elm Street and the west end of town near Washington Park - locally known as Goat Hill - were deemed "blighted" by the Housing Authority.
The Housing Authority drafted a plan to build 50 units of modern apartments on Elm Street and 120 units for the Morris-Edmonds public housing near Washington Park.
Twenty-eight-year-old Randy Halsey, housing and relocation director for the Housing Authority at the time, was tasked with finding new homes for the families displaced by the project.
Halsey, now 83, a fair-skinned and rail-thin black man, grew up in the 1930s and '40s in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood in Marion, Virginia. But he walked past three white schools to get to the black high school.
"I grew up in a segregated society but didn't know it," he said. "If you don't know it, it doesn't bother you. I grew up in a segregated society, and I saw the difference in education but wasn't old enough to understand what the difference was. I didn't recognize that you go to church separately, you eat separately. At the age of 15, how are you going to know the difference?
"It became part of your life," he continued. "Someday you hope that you can change the lives of other people in a meaningful way."
He traveled nearly 800 miles to Jefferson City in the 1950s with $11 in his pocket and an 11th-grade education; his high school didn't offer 12th grade. He then attended Lincoln University and later joined the Housing Authority in 1960.
The families in the mostly white Morris-Edmonds neighborhood took their $3,000 relocation check from the Housing Authority and had the freedom to live almost anywhere in Jefferson City. Relocating them was easy, he said.
Families in the mostly black Elm Street neighborhood were constrained to the limited, aging housing in black neighborhoods where banks would offer them loans.
"We ran into a problem," he said. "As we moved people off Elm Street, we could only find houses that were 20 or 30 years old that we could move black families into. The blacks were in dire need of better housing. They were moving from Elm Street to Clark Avenue, and those houses were 30 or 40 years old. Those were the only houses blacks could buy. They could not buy a new house because the banks wouldn't make the money available. We talked to federal agencies and told them what we're dealing with and said, 'Hey, we need to do something differently. We need to do something that allows blacks to buy lots and build new houses.'"
Thus the Campus View Urban Renewal project was created in the early 1960s.
The project was a three-pronged approach to build the public housing apartments and create the Campus View subdivision on Roland Street so black families could purchase bargain lots and build new single-family housing.
Before the subdivision was created, Roland Street was a thick knot of trees and brush owned by a Columbia doctor named Roland. After the Housing Authority purchased the land, the authority excavated the raw earth and platted it into 27 lots on Franklin and Roland streets.
Halsey said only a handful of the 21 Elm Street families - who the subdivision was intended for - built houses there. He couldn't think of anyone from that time who was still alive.
The majority of the other buyers were Lincoln University faculty, he said.
"This housing met the need for many faculty and staff with Lincoln University that couldn't get housing elsewhere," he said. "The laws back then weren't strong enough to say to someone that's turned down (by a bank), 'You're wrong.' You more or less just walked away and said, 'It's the law,' and people accepted it. You grew up with the mentality that 'I'm OK, and this is my place.'"
The single-family subdivision on Roland Street was completed in 1965, just more than a year after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Remnants of segregation
Joyce Webb and her husband, Don, were in the market for a family home in 1972 after he retired from the New England Patriots.
The pair grew up on Elm Street. She lived there for many years in a one-story stucco house, and he lived on the opposite end of the neighborhood. Her family lived in the Elm Street house for several years before her parents built a house on Lafayette Street, where she lived until she married.
"When we started looking for a house, it was possible to find one in other places," Webb said. "Even though real estate agents would try to steer you into certain areas, they would say, 'I bet you'd be more comfortable on the east end of town.' And back when we were looking for a house in the west end, sometimes they were reluctant to show properties in certain parts of town. So we got the message that he was interested in helping us find a house in 'our area.'"
"I can't remember feeling intimidated, but I was a little upset when he said, 'I think you'd probably be happier on the east end of town,'" she said.
The Webbs ultimately bought land on Roland Street and built a split-level house so they could be close to family and in the heart of town. Her two children could also walk to Thorpe Gordon Elementary School and the newest Jefferson City High School campus on Union Street, built in 1964.
Jean King and her daughter, Joselyn King, live down the street from the Webbs, where they built their home in 1971. Joselyn King said her parents picked that lot because of the location as well but said it might have been more difficult to build a house in other parts of town.
Segregation was federally dissolved in 1964, but true integration didn't occur in Jefferson City until the 1980s, said Gary Kremer, executive director of the State Historical Society of Missouri.
There weren't segregation ordinances in Jefferson City, but there were clear efforts to keep neighborhoods segregated, Kremer said.
An Ivy League professor teaching at Lincoln University in the mid-1960s orchestrated an experiment in Jefferson City with white and black groups of people pretending to seek homes in predominantly white neighborhoods.
"He was trying to prove what everyone else knew," he said. "If you were African-American trying to buy houses near the university, but in a white neighborhood, the going price was significantly higher than if you were white. They offered the houses for 25-30 percent more to African-Americans. They took this matter to the City Council as a way of proving segregation was still significant. It was all part of an effort to keep African-Americans from moving into white neighborhoods."
Kremer, who has been a resident of Jefferson City since 1968, said some businesses were reluctant to integrate even after the Civil Rights Act passed.
On July 2, 1964, the day the act passed, the Jefferson City Post Tribune published just one local story about how integration would touch Jefferson City. The story, headlined "Local Places Vow Compliance," was an announcement from the chairman of the local Commission on Human Rights that the "leading places of public accommodation" would comply with the integration laws.
"We are happy that our city is taking the lead to voluntarily comply with the law," said chairman Nicholas Monaco. "A number of businessmen whom the commission contacted were perfectly frank in telling us that they had opposed this law. However, as businessmen, they recognized the importance of dealing with these problems on an unemotional basis and the importance to the city and state of maintaining law and order."
Kremer said he recalled interviewing a man who operated a restaurant on High Street in the mid-1960s who eventually folded and allowed African-Americans to eat at his restaurant but said they weren't allowed to sit in the windows where passersby could see them.
"He went to his grave thinking he offered real integration and never really understood what an affront that was," he said. "You can come in; you just have to sit in the back."
The school district's role
An April 1962 Campus View Urban Renewal plan details the area was designated for single-family dwellings only until 2000, and those standards were to be automatically renewed every five years unless otherwise amended.
However, the plan also notes schools are allowed in that area as part of the urban renewal project.
If JCPS expands onto that property, the area would not be rezoned, but the district would need a conditional use permit, said Eric Barron, senior planner for Jefferson City.
Schools fall under all residential zoning codes, so the district's expansion would, for the most part, fit that use, he said.
"But it deserves an extra layer of review because of a higher potential of conflict with the surrounding land uses that are otherwise permitted in that district," Barron said.
The permit request would be reviewed by the Board of Adjustment, which would assess the impact to the area, and the public would have the opportunity to comment on the plans.
The JCPS Board of Education was scheduled to vote on purchasing the property Oct. 10 during its regular meeting, but the residents who spoke swayed them to table the vote until the Nov. 14 board meeting.
Halsey was among the many who shared their concerns and explained the neighborhood's history to the board.
"History is such an important aspect because it sets a precedent on so many people's rationales, and it sets the foundation and framework and history in terms of where someone is coming from and what their view is," said Board President John Ruth. "Understanding the history helps you better empathize with anyone in terms of their perspective on the issue."
The history of Roland Street is important to consider, Ruth said, before voting on the property purchase.
Even if the board opts not to buy the property, the high school at 609 Union St. will always be there, and there will still be space needs, he said.
Linthacum said district officials have discussed using the land for parking, to host the adult education program or to offer an alternative setting for students with behavioral issues.
He said the high school is short some 300 parking spaces. Students are parking around the perimeter of the high school, which presents a safety issue.
One resident suggested the high school use its driver's education lot for parking if it is desperate for space, so Linthacum decided to park there one day and time the walk to the high school.
It took him eight minutes, he said, and he had to cross Stadium Boulevard to make it to the high school.
The district wants to be a good neighbor regardless of whether it buys the property, Linthacum said. Most days, he drives to Roland Street and monitors the traffic activity, and he has met with the Jefferson City Police Department about patrolling the area more. During his visits, he said, he has picked up trash; and some school clubs have talked about picking up trash in that neighborhood as a community service project.
During the Kings' interview with the News Tribune, Joselyn King caught a group of boys cutting through the yard. She hurried out the front door and hollered at them to go around the block, not through her private yard.
She has posted dozens of "private property" signs around her home and yard, but she regularly finds them ripped down or ignored. Some of the trespassing is by Lincoln students, she said, but the majority is from the high school.
"The number of kids going through the neighborhood has reached a nuisance level," she said.
If the district buys the land, she fears more will make her yard a regular route to school.
Linthacum said all concerns are being considered before the district makes a decision. The district has to consider land if it comes up for sale and conjoins the high school because that opportunity is rare, he added.
"We've had some difficult conversations with folks. And we're not shying away from those, and we understand," he said. "We still have needs, and we're trying to address those as well."