In December, when Kansas City’s Guadalupe Centers announced a plan to use the former FBI field office on Summit to expand its charter school program, a reader asked about the history of another area school a few blocks to the south.

Today the building at 1936 Summit still bears the engraving “West Junior High School,” but those who have lived in the area long enough may recall the institution’s final decade when it became both a senior high school and the center of community activism.

By the late 1960s, years of highway construction had left the Westside physically isolated. Its declining population, made up of roughly equal numbers of Hispanic, Black, and white residents, suffered from unemployment at double the city-wide average. The Star reported that federal housing officials told the mayor the area was “no longer viable as a residential community.”

With a fifth of the population under the age of 20 and a dropout rate nearing 9%, neighborhood activists argued that a new high school would serve as a community anchor. After years of public pressure, the Kansas City Board of Education acquiesced and, in 1968, authorized an official study of education on the Westside.

Read the rest of the story at KCHistory.org.