Fairyland Park

Fairyland Park was an amusement park that was owned by the Italian Brancato family and operated from 1923 to 1977. Fairyland Park was a place for Kansas Citians to enjoy a number of fun activities, as it featured three roller-coasters (at its peak), a swimming pool, a dance hall, and more. The park, however, was segregated, only allowing African Americans and other non-white groups into the park one day a year.

Fairyland Park was desegregated due to the efforts of a number of groups and individuals, in particular the Kansas City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council. In 1962, the NAACP Youth Council protested the exclusion of African American children from the park on the steps of City Hall. The group also staged a separate protest against Kansas City’s Red Cross for the use of Fairyland’s “Crystal Pool” for a training course, chosen over a number of desegregated pools. The collective efforts of the NAACP Youth Council and other activists came to fruition when Fairyland officially desegregated in 1964. Fairyland Park also served as an important site for Kansas City music. Despite the park being segregated in the 1930s, African American Jazz bands like Thamon Hayes’ Kansas City Rockets and Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra were enthusiastically welcomed by white park goers. This love of music was memorialized by composers William R. Clay and Ned Underhill in their song, Fairyland Park and You, with the lyrics, “when you’re lonely and blue, there’s a place to go to, where there’s thrills and there’s music sublime.” Fairyland Park closed in 1977 due to the rising popularity of its competitor Worlds of Fun, and storm damage the park had sustained. The park stood abandoned until it was torn down in the late 1990s. Fairyland Park’s roller-coaster The Wildcat lives on, however, with its relocation in 1991 to Frontier City in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Bibliography

Clay, William R. and Underhill, Ned. “Fairyland Park and You,” 1927. Sheet Music. Sheet Music Collection, LaBudde Special Collections, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umkc/islandora/object/umkc%3A18710#page/1/mode/2up

Cresswell’s. Bennie Moten Orchestra. 1931. Photograph. American Jazz Museum. Kansas City, Missouri. https://pendergastkc.org/collection/11617/ajm-mc01-96-43-5/bennie-moten-orchestra

Cresswell’s. Thamon Hayes’ Kansas City Rockets. 1932. Photograph. American Jazz Museum. Kansas City, Missouri. https://pendergastkc.org/collection/11617/ajm-1999-20-288/thamon-hayes%E2%80%99-kansas-city-rockets

Davis, Chuck. “It's New at Frontier City!” Oklahoman.com. Oklahoman, April 19, 1991. https://oklahoman.com/article/2354278/its-new-at-frontier-city

“Kansas City Youth Conference Held by NAACP Youth Council.” Arizona Sun. September 13, 1962, (Phoenix, Arizona.) Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84021917/1962-09-13/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1923&index=5&rows=20&words=Fairyland+Park&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=Fairyland+Park&y=16&x=18&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

“Red Cross Use of Pool Protested.” Arizona Sun. October 6, 1960, (Phoenix, Arizona.) Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84021917/1960-10-06/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1911&index=5&rows=20&words=Fairyland+Park&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=Fairyland+Park&y=14&x=15&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Ziegler, Laura. “Years Ago, Summer Meant (Almost) Everyone Headed to Fairyland Park.” KCUR. NPR, May 30, 2014. https://www.kcur.org/post/years-ago-summer-meant-almost-everyone-headed-fairyland-park#stream/0.

Single page flyer, 1961. Youth Council National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Kansas City, Missouri Branch. The Kansas City Public Library. SC63, Fairyland Park.

Content Provided by:

Elizabeth Trafton, student at the University of Missouri Kansas City as part of Dr. Sandra Enriquez’s Urban History Class

Read more about the desegregation of Fairyland Park from the March 9, 2020 Flatland KC’s article, “curiousKC: Winning Access to Fairyland Park Popular Amusement Park Became Civil Rights Battleground” written by Brian Burnes.