Police brutality shocked Kansas City’s Black community in 1941. Community members took action.

The Kansas City skyline at sunrise in 2024. (Getty Images)

Recent accounts of a brutal law enforcement presence descending on a city recalled an earlier moment in Kansas City’s history, when Black civic leaders successfully forced the removal of the city’s police chief.

I wrote about the removal of Chief Lear Reed in “Kansas City’s Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home” from the University Press of Kansas. That episode underscores how a determined and unified community was able to achieve meaningful institutional change through sustained and nonviolent collective action.

To appreciate the circumstances surrounding Reed, some background is necessary. The Kansas City, Missouri, police department had been corrupted under Tom Pendergast, the political leader who dominated local government and Jackson County’s Democratic Party in the early 20th Century. Officers accepted bribes to avoid enforcing laws against clubs — many within the Black community — that agreed to distribute Pendergast’s alcohol.

“Boss Tom” was imprisoned in 1939 for income tax evasion, after which the Board of Police Commissioners hired Reed, a former FBI agent, to restore “law and order.” Police records indicate that arrests skyrocketed under Reed’s leadership, increasing from approximately 600 per month in July 1939 to more than 10,100 per month by January 1941.

As you might guess, a disproportionate number of those arrested were Black residents.

“Police brutality and disrespect for the rights of Negroes in particular is at its worst in the history of Kansas City,” wrote Kansas City NAACP chapter president Carl Johnson to editors of the Kansas City Star in February 1941.

In addition to random beatings — such as the violence endured by James Williams (so severely beaten in custody that he committed suicide) — Black teachers reported being routinely stopped and ticketed without cause. Black couples were approached and questioned if the woman appeared White. Black teenagers were forced out of a certain neighborhoods because they were in areas where white youth socialized. Police repeatedly hurled racial epithets at women and children, particularly during the annual Halloween parade at 18th and Vine.

Reed also dismissed most of police force’s Black personnel. In July 1939, there were 32 Black officers on the force, by 1941, fewer than 10 remained.

The situation came to a head on July 26, 1941, when two officers arrived at the Autumn Leaf Club, a popular pool hall at 12th and Highland on the east side of Kansas City. Every Black witness told a similar story of that evening’s events. The two white officers arrived appearing ready for a confrontation.

After ordering a group of men playing pool to sit down against the wall, Officer Charles LeBaugh shouted, “Who’s feeling lucky?” He approached each man in turn, shouting racial epithets and demanding to know whether he felt like a “winner.”

When LeBaugh reached 49-year-old Harrison Ware, he seized the man by the shirt collar and declared that he had found the leader. LeBaugh struck Ware and threw him across the room. Ware landed near the pool table, grabbed a ball and threw at LeBaugh. A struggle followed, during which LeBaugh ordered his partner to shoot Ware. His partner, Dewey Ellis, complied.

The Kansas City Call newspaper printed a photo of the dead Ware with gunshot holes on his back on August 1, 1941. The Call also printed accounts from witnesses, most of whom told reporters that they been forced to sign false statements about the shooting. 

Call publisher Chester Franklin wrote to Missouri Gov. Forrest Donnell about the “gestapo like” tactics the department was using on the city’s Black community, and the local NAACP chapter organized a meeting. 

Soon after, a group of Black leaders met with Donnell to address the increasingly untenable situation. After hearing their accounts of police brutality, Donnell ordered police commissioners to investigate. Their report to the governor illustrates how perilous conditions can become when law enforcement officers hold bigoted beliefs that go unchallenged.

In its report, the board of commissioners acknowledged that Reed’s department policed Black and white neighborhoods differently. To the commissioners, it was justified.

“A certain type of Negro has gotten into the habit of drinking a cheap grade of wine, which sometimes causes the drinker to lose all self-control when so intoxicated,” they wrote. “At any time, (police officers) might be the victim of an intoxicated Negro gone amuck.” 

The board declared that it was proud of the department policing its Black communities so closely at a time when other cities “act surprised and amused that the Department even works on a Negro killing, let alone going to the expense of returning them for court action.”

It acknowledged the harassment and illegal searches, where officers routinely took knives and other property from Black citizens: “Since the best way to reduce crime is to prevent its commission, and since statistics have shown that the majority of assaults and killings have been done by drunken Negroes in possession of knives, we have come to the conclusion that this policy of disarming Negroes is the only possible solution.” 

The board conceded that a few police officers may not have the temperament to patrol Black neighborhoods, and it was doing its best to reassign these men, but what else could they do?

According to commissioners, not only were people in the Black community more criminal than their white counterparts, but they also declared that a significant portion of Kansas City’s Black population were members of the Communist Party. 

Donnell was not persuaded by Reed or by the report the police commissioners submitted. By fall, Lear Reed had left the force. 

Margie Carr is the author of “Kansas City’s Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home,” published by University Press of Kansas in 2023. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.