Rename Troost as Truth Avenue? Not until all Kansas City has a chance to talk about it

What’s in a name? If it’s Troost Avenue, named after Benoist Troost, a Kansas City founding father and physician who also was a slave owner, then it’s a lot of ugly history and also the symbol of decades of racial division. And no, we definitely should not be honoring anyone who perpetrated the turpitude of enslaving people.

Chris Goode, a former Kansas City Parks and Recreation commissioner, wants to rename Troost Avenue, one of the city’s best-known streets, mostly because it served as a racial dividing line.

Kansas City should talk about this.

An online petition he created a few weeks ago has gotten nearly 1,000 signatures as of Monday morning in support of the renaming effort. Goode also pushed for J.C. Nichols’ name to be stripped from the fountain in Mill Creek Park and for the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the city.

Goode suggests changing Troost to Truth Avenue. The name Troost “doesn’t represent the current state of this avenue or the trajectory of our beloved city,” he said.

“To tell the truth about the history but then move swiftly past it does not erase it. It creates authenticity,” he said.

But does changing the name of the street do much for ending the divisions the name conjures, including gaps in education, wealth and housing, and a history of less opportunity for many residents on the East Side?

It could be a gesture toward that end, but not if it only serves to change the way Kansas City expresses its racial divide. So instead of saying east of Troost, folks will just refer to east of whatever new name is slapped on a street sign, and not much else changes about how Black residents there are viewed.

Goode, who owns Ruby Jean’s Kitchen & Juicery, a health-focused restaurant at 30th and Troost, is right. In recent years, much has been done to improve Troost and the communities east of it. “There’s tons of nonprofits, tons of new businesses, tons of new homeowners, tons of resident development,” he said. Yes, millions of dollars have gone into and continue to be invested in development along the Troost corridor.

“It doesn’t stand for racism. It doesn’t stand for hatred. It stands for unity and it’s happening,” Goode has said. OK, but it’s equally important to make sure those investments serve the generations of people who have lived and worked in and along the corridor.

Today’s Troost has come a long way from its history, when it was a line of demarcation for redlining, blockbusting and panic selling that forced Black Kansas Citians east and set off white flight to the west. It reminds us of the Kansas City school board’s involvement, using micro boundary changes to keep schools segregated long after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that it was unconstitutional.

That history should not be forgotten, and should be marked publicly in perpetuity in some way. The city’s history has helped shape the present, and where that history has been harmful, we should know it and learn from it.

Whether Troost should be renamed, what that name should be, and how the history of the street is remembered are discussions Kansas City needs to have. A series of community listening sessions definitely needs to be offered. Once the dates and times are set, we suggest that the community show up, speak up and engage in the conversation.

What happens in the end should be an all-Kansas-Citians decision that unites, not divides.