Chester Owens, who spent his life studying and teaching the history of Wyandotte County and its Black community, died Thursday at his home in Kansas City, Kansas. Owens was 91.
His sister Sandra Owens said the family was still in shock at the loss.
“He was the oldest living sibling,” she said. “He was our big brother. We all looked up to him. Everybody did. Somebody had to be in charge and that was Chester. Always there for everybody when you needed him.”
Owens will be remembered as a civil rights activist. historian and educator. He’s credited with helping desegregate businesses in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, and he rubbed shoulders with Martin Luther King Jr., and other icons of the movement. Owens also co-founded a bookstore in Kansas City, Kansas, that became a gathering place for readings and conversation about Black literature and culture.
Robert L. Hughes, a real estate developer in Kansas City, was Owens’ cousin. He said family was the only thing more important to Owens than his community.
“He used to be my babysitter,” Hughes said. “And recently he’d call me up and say ‘How you doin’, Bob?’ and I’d say, ‘I’m the one supposed to be calling you!’ He looked out for everyone. The family has lost its patriarch.”
Hughes said Owens’ life was driven by his desire to see civil order and justice in Wyandotte County. “He was a teacher, a lifelong learner, with a passion to keep the important Black history in Wyandotte County alive.”
Desegregating KCK
Owens spent decades as an insurance agent with the Black-owned H.W. Sewing and Co. insurance firm. The firm was founded by Henry Warren Sewing, who also established the first Black-owned bank in the Midwest, Douglas State Bank. Owens purchased H.W. Sewing and Co. and served many years as its president.
In 1983, he became the first Black man to serve on the Kansas City, Kansas, City Council, remaining in office for two terms.
But on the streets of his beloved Kansas City, Kansas, Owens was known as a fierce fighter for desegregation and the rights of Black people.
His parents moved to KCK when he was 13 and the area was still segregated. Owens remembered how the Black community was not protected by the white police force.
“I rarely, if ever, saw white police officers, unless I was on Minnesota Avenue,” he said. “There were Black police officers and they were part of the community. They lived here.”
Owens was successful in desegregating downtown KCK businesses.
In 1952, he insisted on being served at the whites-only Kresge soda fountain on Minnesota Avenue when he showed up in his military uniform. The waitress got permission and served him.
Years later, as chair of the NAACP’s labor and industry committee, Owens organized a letter writing campaign and a picket line to force still-segregated businesses to integrate on the downtown’s main street. Protests succeeded and most of the businesses eventually agreed to serve and hire Black people.
In January 1968, Owens and a group of Black men joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after King spoke at Kansas State University.
“We were really just there to make him comfortable,” Owens told KCUR in 2018. But it was also an expression of solidarity. Black activists, including Owens, had come under the scrutiny of law enforcement for their civil rights and Vietnam War protests. Owens said the group was motivated by the momentum of activists like King.
“Fear was eliminated from most of our lives,” he said, speaking to KCUR.
Owens said he relied on the Bible to guide him when, despite his moral commitment, injustice persisted.
“Your spiritual beliefs — and I might quote a scripture that says: ‘For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind’ — things … become clear.”
After the meeting with King that day in 1968, Owens said he went home and told his wife he felt the angst of the historical moment on King’s face. “You could see fear … you could see death in his eyes,” he told her. King was assassinated less than two months later.
The Hub
In 1965, Owens and his wife Lillie co-founded a bookstore with their friends Dorothy and James McField.
The corner shop at 5th and Quindaro was called The Hub and became a clearinghouse for Black literature, history and culture. At the height of the Civil Rights era, The Hub became a place where progressives and activists — Black and white — congregated for readings and conversation. Literary and political icons like Alex Haley, Ron Dellums and Chinua Achebe came through. In an interview in 2019, Owens told KCUR the shop was a labor of love.
“(It was about) the young people who would sit down on the floor of The Hub and read the books," says Owens. “(Profit) had nothing to do with it.” The bookstore closed in 1975 as national chain bookstores started to carry more of the African and African American literature once concentrated in Black bookstores.
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, recently recognized Owens’ achievements and contributions to the area with an honorary marker near his home at 11th and Washington. The short block will be named Chester and Lillie Owens Lane, in honor of the couple. Owens spoke of Lillie with adoration. She died in 2017, just short of the couple’s 62nd wedding anniversary.
Owens’ legacy may be best summed up by his remarks to KCUR in 2020.
“When people look at people like me and say, ‘Why you always angry, why are you upset?’ I say ‘I’m not angry with anyone. I am disappointed at we who allow this kind of stuff to go on and don’t say anything.’”
Owens said he was annoyed at people who celebrated the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis, but didn’t take his words to heart.
“(Lewis) said you have a moral obligation to say something or do something about it,” Owens said. “There’s something going on in Wyandotte County every day and very few people say anything. You’re looking at one of the people who will say something.”
Owens had a stroke in February that impaired some of his functions, according to his family. He had been looking forward to a move to North Carolina next month to be close to his daughter.
Owens is survived by four sisters and one brother as well as two daughters. Plans for memorial services are pending.
