LINC's Rosemary Smith Lowe helps filmmaker tell Santa Fe Place Neighborhood's discrimination struggle

Rosemary Smith Lowe speaks with filmmaker Nico Wiggins in the documentary “Land of Opportunity” that premiered on KCPT this month.

Filmmaker Nico Wiggins narrates his documentary Land of Opportunity.

The Santa Fe Place Neighborhood in Kansas City rose resiliently in the struggle against discriminatory housing in the 1950s.

And longtime LINC Commissioner Rosemary Smith Lowe shouldered her community’s pain and revival.

It’s no wonder then, when filmmaker Nico Wiggins explored the emotional and lasting scars of America’s redlining legacy, that Lowe would be a central figure in the tale.

Wiggins’ documentary, Land of Opportunity, premiered this month on KCPT Public Television.

Lowe, who would become a powerful leader over the years rallying Kansas City neighborhoods in pursuit of justice and prosperity, for 23 years worked for a black physician named Dr. Dennis Madison Miller whose office was at 18th and Vine. The film includes an account of Miller’s efforts to break Kansas City’s segregation line of 27th Street and move into Santa Fe Place.

Dr. Dennis Madison Miller

In the 1948 case Shelley vs. Kraemer the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racially restrictive covenants. Soon the Miller family moved into Santa Fe Place, and Lowe followed right behind, moving into the neighborhood that has been her home since 1952.

KCPT describes Wiggins’ film as capturing the far-reaching impact of American practice and policy — beginning with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s series of programs during the Great Depression called the New Deal that were intended to rebuild the nation. Some of those programs encouraged discriminatory housing policies such as redlining, resulting in dilapidation of 85% of Kansas City’s black neighborhoods.

Well-to-do black families, KCPT’s account said, set their sights on the prestigious Santa Fe Place neighborhood, located just south of the black East Side. Established by rich white elites, the neighborhood association filed a racially restrictive covenant, intended to bar black families from moving into the area for 30 years.

Miller, among others, took the neighborhood association to the Missouri Supreme Court four times in their attempt to move into the neighborhood. And once the U.S. Supreme Court barred the restrictive covenants, black families moved into Santa Fe Place four times faster than any other neighborhood where they could purchase property. Land of Opportunity is the story of integration in the Santa Fe Place neighborhood as one example in the fight for housing rights across America following the Great Depression.

Footage from Land of Opportunity shows Santa Fe Place today.