Group working to change name of suburban Kansas City creek

LEAWOOD, Kan. (AP) – A group working to change the name of a stream called Negro Creek that runs through parts of a suburban Kansas City county hopes to expand the effort to include other Kansas geographical sites that have the term in their names.

So far, the work has focused on a creek that flows through a golf course in Leawood and parts of Overland Park in Johnson County.

Historians aren’t sure how the creek was named in the 1850s, but a leading theory is that it was named after an escaped Black slave who killed himself near the waterway rather than be recaptured.

A committee comprised of county officials, historians and activists has begun the lengthy process of renaming the creek.