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Negro Creek in Kansas to keep controversial name, commemorating its grisly past
Historians believe Negro Creek may have gotten its name after a Black man who tried to escape from a Missouri farm decided to kill himself rather than face capture and a return to slavery. - Tammy Ljungblad/Kansas City Star/TNS

Negro Creek in Kansas to keep controversial name, commemorating its grisly past

Despite calls to rename Johnson County, Kansas’ Negro Creek, a committee has decided to keep the controversial name, worried that removing it would erase a painful piece of history. Many Johnson County residents spent years unaware of the small, unmarked creek that flows through a golf course in Leawood and in southern Overland Park, in one of the most affluent areas of Kansas’ wealthiest county. But a couple of years ago, activists brought attention to the tributary and the mystery behind its troubling name, calling on leaders to remove it. The name, historians have discovered, most likely ca...

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