The Kansas City Defender

The Kansas City Defender Black news, politics, arts & culture.

Three Black kids from Kansas City are breaking into some of the highest levels of youth hockey — in a sport where Black ...
05/14/2026

Three Black kids from Kansas City are breaking into some of the highest levels of youth hockey — in a sport where Black players remain vastly underrepresented. 🏒

15-year-old Asher Baron was selected by the Youngstown Phantoms in the 2026 USHL Phase I Draft, becoming one of the few Black players from the Kansas City area to reach this level of junior hockey development.

Phoenix Herron recently signed with Omaha Mastery AAA, continuing his rise through elite youth hockey pipelines after being highlighted by TPH Hockey Development programs.

And 13-year-old Killian Cruth is already skating through elite AAA and Junior Blues development pathways in St. Louis.

Why this matters: Hockey remains one of the least diverse major sports in North America. Multiple reports have found that Black players make up only a small percentage of NHL athletes, while the league itself remains overwhelmingly white.

In 2022, the NHL reported that more than 83% of its workforce was white, while Black employees made up just 3.74%.

That’s what makes stories like this important.

For young Black kids in Kansas City dreaming about hockey, seeing players who look like them break into elite pipelines matters. Representation matters. Access matters. Visibility matters.

And these young athletes are helping expand what the future of hockey can look like.

Erica Green Birthday Vigil Friday, May 15, 2026. 6 PM. Children’s Memorial at Hibbs Park. 5905 Spruce Ave, Kansas City, ...
05/11/2026

Erica Green Birthday Vigil Friday, May 15, 2026. 6 PM. Children’s Memorial at Hibbs Park. 5905 Spruce Ave, Kansas City, MO.

Speakers include Edith Duskin, Alvin Brooks, and members of the Precious Doe Committee. Hosted by Vaughan Harrison of The Kansas City Defender.

Open to the public. Especially for women affected by violence against children, & for anyone who has carried this case the last 25 years.

Bring a card, a candle, a teddy bear, flowers... Anything you’d like to show reverence.

This year marks 25 years since Erica was found in Kansas City. KC knew her as Precious Doe for four years before she had her name back. We’re gathering on her birthday to say it again.

Hundreds of Kansas City Black residents moved through The Defender’s Free Store at 31st & Prospect this week, receiving ...
05/06/2026

Hundreds of Kansas City Black residents moved through The Defender’s Free Store at 31st & Prospect this week, receiving clothing, hygiene supplies, and other everyday essentials.

Our Defender Mutual Aid Team created this program in the spirit of the Black Panther Party’s Survival Programs, the same lineage that built free breakfast for children and free clinics for our communities.

We distributed hundreds of items of stylish seasonal clothing, deodorant, body wash, lotion, toothbrushes, and full menstrual care.

Many people in this city call 31st and Prospect a crime hotspot. Fewer remember that this corner was central to the uprisings that swept Kansas City after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. They sent tanks down these streets. They sent snipers to the rooftops. They killed our people here. Fifty-eight Aprils later, our Defender Mutual Aid Team came back with clothing, hygiene, and political education for the people the state abandoned.

The effort was carried out in partnership with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, who supported outreach and on-the-ground distribution throughout the day.

To support or get involved, just shoot us a DM!

05/01/2026

Westport streets are filling up with workers, students, organizers, and community members for May Day, a mass rally led by groups like the Missouri Workers Center, Stand Up KC, Indivisible KC, and a coalition of labor and immigrant justice organizations.

This protest is part of a nationwide day of action. No work. No school. No shopping. A direct disruption of business as usual to show how much power working people actually hold.

Protesters are demanding an economy that prioritizes workers over billionaires, calling for higher wages, stronger protections, immigrant justice, and a democracy that actually works for all of us.

Kansas City is one of thousands of cities mobilizing today, continuing a long history of labor resistance that started with workers walking off the job in 1886.

If you’re in the city and you’re ready march, this is happening now until 5:30 PM.

04/29/2026

You’ve heard their story about you. Now it’s time to tell your own and we’ve partnered with to help you do it.

Yes, that’s right — our first ever Defender Dispatch Challenge is still underway as we’ve extended the deadline so more students can participate! That means, Black high school students across Kansas City, you still have a chance to submit your story.

Share what people get wrong about being young and Black in KC using a short-form video. No experience needed. Just your voice and your perspective.

💰 Win up to $1,000
📰 Get published in The Kansas City Defender
🎤 Be featured in an interview + article
📣 Gain national exposure
⏰ Deadline extended to May 30
📧 Submit your video to: [email protected]

Tag a student who needs to see this.
Comment “done” once you’ve submitted your video.

91 years later, the legacy comes home.The Count Basie Orchestra returns to KC this Thursday, carrying forward a sound th...
04/29/2026

91 years later, the legacy comes home.

The Count Basie Orchestra returns to KC this Thursday, carrying forward a sound that started right here and went on to shape music across the world. From swing to now, this is Black musical excellence that has never stopped evolving.

On the eve of International Jazz Day, there’s no better time to witness it live.

📍 KC Music Hall
🗓 Thursday, April 30
⏰ 6:30 PM

Limited tickets still available.

InternationalJazzDay

04/28/2026

Twenty-five years ago, Kansas City knew her as Precious Doe.

Her name was Erica Michelle Marie Green.

In 2001, the nearly four-year-old girl was found near 59th and Kensington. For four years, her identity remained unknown as Black Kansas Citians grieved, searched, and tried to make sense of a loss that still sits heavy in this city’s memory.

But Erica’s story is not only about what happened to her. It is also about the systems that allowed the truth to sit within reach for years, the people who kept saying she mattered, and what Kansas City still has not learned about protecting Black girls.

Read full story at the link in bio.

If it's one white person in history who gets a lifetime invite to the cookout, it's John Brown. Put some respek on that ...
04/24/2026

If it's one white person in history who gets a lifetime invite to the cookout, it's John Brown. Put some respek on that man name.

He was putting belt to ass centuries before the phrase existed.

He wasn't interested in DEI. No workshops. No HR complaints. No "let me sit with my discomfort."

Man pulled up to cuz house with his sons. Demanded all the white supremacist enslavers come outside. Shot the racist daddy in the head, dragged the adult enslaver sons out, put belt to ass on them so hard they died too.

Yet the local NPR station had the audacity to question this brother.

OUR LATEST EDITORIAL BY THE KC DEFENDER EXECUTIVE EDITOR 🔥✍🏽

On April 21, 2026, the NPR affiliate (KCUR) in Kansas City published a considered meditation on whether a man who was hanged in 1859 for trying to abolish chattel slavery deserves to be called a hero. The piece does not reach a conclusion. That refusal, in the tradition of white American public radio, is the conclusion.

The question posed by the headline, "Was abolitionist John Brown a hero or a menace?", can only be asked from a moral universe in which enslavement is a regrettable climate, and violence against enslavers is an ethical puzzle.

In that universe, Harriet Tubman is a kidnapper, Nat Turner is a murderer, Denmark Vesey is a conspirator, and John Brown is a question. In the actual universe, the one where four million human beings were human trafficked and under genocide, where children were torn from their mothers and sold at auction, where the federal government spent half a century protecting the right of one human being to whip another to death, the question answers itself.

Someone will ask why The Defender has given this much attention to a single NPR affiliate's morning broadcast. The answer is that I am not simply concerned with KCUR. I find them emblematic of the contagion at the root of white American journalism.

This piece belongs to my Writers at War series, which takes its name from the plain fact that the Black press has always been, and remains, a combatant in a longer conflict.

Read the full editorial at kansascitydefender.com

WE ARE IN THE STREETS AGAIN THIS SATURDAY PROVIDING FREE CLOTHING AND HYGIENE ITEMS!Come through to The Kansas City Defe...
04/23/2026

WE ARE IN THE STREETS AGAIN THIS SATURDAY PROVIDING FREE CLOTHING AND HYGIENE ITEMS!

Come through to The Kansas City Defender's Free Hygiene Giveaway, this Saturday from 1-4PM at Bluford Library on 3050 Prospect.

Free hygiene supplies for the Black community and everybody in KC who needs them.

Socks, underwear, toothbrushes, deodorant, body wash, lotion, and full menstrual care. NO FORMS, NO DRUG TESTS, NO NOTHING JUST COME AND TAKE WHAT YOU NEED WITH DIGNITY.

04/22/2026

It’s that time again! We’ll be distributing clothing and hygiene items starting at 1 PM at the KC Public Library Bluford Branch, located at 3050 Prospect.

We’ll be there until 4 PM, or until everything is gone.

Please note, we won’t be accepting donations during the event.

Pull up, spread the word, and come grab what you need.

04/20/2026

In Kansas City, when a Black woman goes missing, the search doesn’t start with urgency. It starts with judgment.

Our latest investigation examines what families and advocates already know: that Black women and girls in this city are disappearing at rates far beyond their share of the population, and too often, the system decides who is worth finding before it decides to look.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

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