On this episode of Banking on KC, Alvin Brooks, civil rights leader and former Mayor Pro Tem of Kansas City, joins host Kelly Scanlon to discuss pivotal moments of his life, his extensive public service, and his vision for leadership and community engagement.
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Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, President of Country Club Bank. Our guest today, Alvin Brooks, is a true Kansas City icon whose leadership and dedication to public service have left an indelible mark on our community. From his early days overcoming racial injustice to his roles as a former mayor pro tem, founder of the AdHoc Group Against Crime and civil rights leader, Mr. Brooks has been at the forefront of shaping Kansas City's history.
In this episode, he shares the pivotal moments that defined his path, the challenges he faced, and his ongoing vision for the future of our city. Whether you know him from his activism, his time on the police force, or his deep faith, today's conversation with Alvin Brooks will take you behind the headlines to the heart of a man whose work has transformed lives and helped set a new course for Kansas City. Stay with us for an inspiring conversation with one of Kansas City's most influential leaders.
Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Alvin Brooks, the former mayor pro tem of Kansas City, president of the Police Board of Commissioners, founder of the AdHoc Group Against Crime, civil rights leader, and community activist. He's here to discuss some of the pivotal moments of his life that shaped his commitment to public service, his perspectives on leadership, and his vision for the future. Welcome, Mr. Brooks.
Alvin Brooks:
Kelly, thank you very much and good to be with you.
Kelly Scanlon:
We're so happy to have you here. I want to take you back a little bit. Reflecting back on your early life in North Little Rock and then your journey to Kansas City, talk to us about some of the pivotal moments that shaped your commitment to public service and to civil rights.
Alvin Brooks:
Well, Kelly, I'm not sure how much my early shaped me for this moment, but I was adopted by the Brookses. My mother was 14, my father was 17. My father never knew that he had a son. The Brookses adopted me when my mother went to live with them. And my mother went to go back to Memphis, Tennessee, where she could finish high school. The Brooks's came to Kansas City after my father killed a white man over a moonshine still. And although the judge and the sheriff had one of my dad's payroll, so they told him he had to get out of town, otherwise they'd charge him for murder in the state of Arkansas. So that's how we got to Kansas City, and that must've been about 1933. I was born May of '32, and I think I was walking at the time.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, I was going to say you were a little boy. Yeah.
Alvin Brooks:
My parents were not church-going folks, hard-working. My dad worked under the Roosevelt New Deal and the WPA. And I never shall forget, he'd come home in the wintertime with the gloves that had the leather palms, and he couldn't take them off because they'd pull his skin off. So he'd come home, and my daddy built a home right across from where the Veterans Hospital now is in the eastern part of the city. And we didn't have any inside water, no inside lights, no inside toilets, of course.
And so when he came on in the evening, I'd have to get this wash pan and warm some water and put some witch hazel in it. And he would first hold his gloves over the stove until they relaxed, the leather did. And the balls of his fingers were just blood, and he'd soak them, and I'd re-soak them, and I'd dry them off. And he told me, never shall forget this, he told me... I must have been... So we're talking about 19, probably '38, '39. And he told me, he said, "Boy, you see this?" He said, "You got to get an education, because you don't want to do this."
And so education, although neither of my parents were high school graduates, taught me importance of education in this society. And he also talked about race. He said, "Because as a black kid you'll not have the same opportunities for a long time that your white counterparts will have, so you got to get an education. You got to be better educated." He didn't say a better person, but a better education. And so up through that and then going to all black elementary schools, high school, first two years of college, all black junior college, we couldn't go to the white junior college at 39th and McGee.
And this was pre-May 17th, 1954, Brown versus Board of Education. And so that time, a good friend of mine, who I learned more about Judaism than I did Christianity from Fred Sack, we were the same age, and somehow we got connected as 15-year-olders and stayed connected until he passed about 12 years ago. And we became involved in Fellowship House at a youth group in Fellowship House, which was a multiracial, multicultural group of adults, but they had a youth component, and we got involved in that.
We had this game where we would go to the Katz drugstores, the Crown drugstore that had fountains, because I couldn't eat there, couldn't sit and eat, and they would order for me. And then when it was came, we had a game, how much could we eat before the manager came and said I had to get out. So that's when the whole movement started. I guess I've been conscious, if you will, of race and religion and gender kind of discrimination in my early years and then participating in it at that time and never stopped.
Kelly Scanlon:
And in some ways that was almost a frivolous question, because, of course, you felt it, and, of course, you experienced it, but you've taken action, one of the first Kansas City, Missouri black police officers. Why did you decide you wanted to join the Kansas City police force? And then how did the experiences on the force influence your approach to community relations and crime prevention later in your career?
Alvin Brooks:
Kelly, I'm asked all the time, why did you join the police department? Because as a kid, and you'd have to read my book, Binding Us Together, as a kid growing up from six or seven years old, as you're reading in my book, our house burned down, and we had to live in a barn for about 7 to 10 days, actual barn. And then we moved in a real poor white neighborhood. And after calling each other's names and fighting, we became friends, blood brothers, because every time we would get into what we thought was trouble, we'd find a piece of glass and prick our fingers and blood all around. So I don't know whether my friends, five of them are still living, but they don't know whether the DNA got some black blood in them. I guess I have some white blood in me, also.
But how the police treated me as opposed to my white friend, we get picked up for something, we get stopped for something, and my dad always had horses, and I had a horse, and police stopped us and called us the N-word, and these are black kids, my cousins. And so after being treated like that, in fact, when I told my dad, my wife and I, Carol, my late wife, and I just turned 21, and I said, "I think I want to go in the police department."
And she never asked why. She said, "Whatever you want to do, okay, and I'll support it." So she said, "You haven't said anything to your dad?" I said, "No, I haven't say anything to him." She said, "Well, you better go talk to your dad." So I caught him sober, and I said, "Dad, I'm thinking about going to the police department." First thing he said, "Why do you want to join that mess? You know how they treat us." And I couldn't give him a good answer. I didn't really respond to it.
But he didn't know that I already made the papers out and taken the test and was supposed to start in the January class of 1954. But I wanted to finish my second year of college in junior college and get my AA degree and got into the June class of '54. And after that, I mean, he accepted the fact. And so as I say, I don't know, some people say, "Well, maybe you couldn't beat them, so you joined them," that old proverb. But no, I just did, and I saw racism from a different vantage point, from an institutional vantage point. I'd seen it individually.
I knew in all black school we talked about slavery, and indigenous people, and the founding of this nation and Declaration of Independence, Constitution, of Bill of Rights, and all those things, 13th, 14th, 15th amendments. We learned that because we had black teachers who taught, wanted us to know what the history was, and where we were, and what we had to do beyond how we prepare ourselves. So that's the only response I can give to why I became, because I really, I don't remember the challenge just for some reason. It wasn't carrying a gun and having authority. It was just that I felt that maybe I could make a difference.
Kelly Scanlon:
How did what you learned there on the department shape your approach to community relations?
Alvin Brooks:
Well, the black officers were relegated to ride in just two districts of the number of districts in the city of Kansas, we hadn't done a lot of annexing there north of the river, and all like that. Some but not much. There was no police station north of the river. So there are only headquarters, and what they call Sheffield at Independence and Bennington and then 63rd Street, and so the black officers were relegated to work just out of the headquarters station, 12th and Locust, but then we could only ride two districts. Whites could ride our district. We couldn't ride.
And I think I saw those challenges. I was, I think, sophisticated enough that I could deal with that without being a rebel without a cause, because it was a rebel with a cause. But I knew with God's help, and although my... Cluster and Estelle Brooks, my adoptive parents were not church-going folks.
For some reason I went to church with the Armstrongs. Mrs. Armstrong would take me to Sunday school, and all. And then as a teenager, I say Fred Sachs and I became very close in Judaism. I stayed following the Christian faith, but I began to see things and do things then in the community. There were only two black high schools at the time, eight white high schools, public schools, and R.T. Coles, the vocational, and Lincoln High School, which still stands at 2111 Woodland. Now it's called Lincoln Preparatory Academy.
And so you knew people, and you knew the social trends. You knew the president of the NAACP. You knew the president of the Urban League because they live in the same area. And Mr. Carl Johnson, who became the first black municipal judge, had a good relationship with him and with Ms. Lucile Bluford, who was the managing editor of the Kansas City Call. She wasn't then, she was a reporter, but became managing editor.
And as a late teen and early twenties developed, because I was president of the youth group, the NAACP Youth Group, where [inaudible 00:09:38] went to Omaha and met not only Roy Wilkins, but also Thurgood Marshall. So all those kinds of things, and with the older people and hearing and going those meetings, it became a part of... It was natural.
Kelly Scanlon:
One of the major things that you did was in 1977 you founded the AdHoc Group Against Crime, and it really is a cornerstone of your legacy here in Kansas City in particular. So what inspired you to create it, and how has its role evolved in Kansas City over the last several decades?
Alvin Brooks:
Well, my police background helped. I left the police department in October of 1964 after 10 years and went with the school district. My relationship with the schools, although it was post-1954, they were still segregated schools. And so going with the school district, having police department, so I was known throughout the district. And then in 1977, I think between March and June of '77, there were 10 women who were killed who were ladies of the evening, or prostitutes, nine black, one white. All of them were unsolved. The black community was very upset, because they thought... There was a Son of Sam in New York, New Jersey that was killing prostitutes.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yes.
Alvin Brooks:
And they felt that there was sort of like a Son of Sam here. It either was police officers killing the prostitutes or johns. And so Alfred Lomax, one of my protegees, had been assigned to the task force, a police officer to work on these cases. And Al and I sat down, although I left the police myself, I went through all 10 of these cases. We concluded that there was no serial killer involved. We looked at they were either killed by a john, either killed by a pimp, or killed by a dope dealer. Most by dope dealers, one or two were different.
So Miss Bluford then was managing editor of The Call, we're talking about now 1977. And I discussed with her, I said, "Miss Bluford, here's the information." She said, "Well, why don't you convene a meeting?" So on the 30th of November... And I had a broad cross-section of black leadership, not only the politicians and ministers, but people in neighborhood groups, presidents. And that meeting was called the 30th of November 1977. Several hundred people were there, and the media were there. Oh, my god, people just got with the camera. Some people before the camera, they just show, "This is my cameo appearance, and I'm going to do best I can."
The next meeting was less, less. When we wanted to go over these 10 cases and say, "Hey, this is not serial. Here's what it is." In December of that year, the next meeting was less people. January, the early part, were less people. And then in January we made a presentation to the Board of Police Commissioners. We had nine requests of them, recommendations to hire more black police officer, promotion opportunities, and all these kind of things, a different relationship with the black community. And then we had 21 things that we as a group would work.
And it started out to be a long name, I think it was the Ad Hoc Group of Community Leaders and Representatives of the Black Community. And the media said, "Hell, that's too long. Let's call it the AdHoc Group Against Crime." So that's how it was narrowed down. And we began to work with the police department, and we raised $30,000 that May of 1978. We began to publicize it, put out posters and everything. And we helped the police department solve most of those 10 unsolved homicides as well as other crimes, as well as other homicides that were not a part of that 10.
And then when the crack cocaine came to Kansas City in about the early '80s, we began to attack that. We developed marches against crack dealing. We sat undercover with undercover people and watching crack houses. And we had people call in, give them the address and the name and model and make and advise number of cars. And it was interesting at the time, 50% of those who [inaudible 00:13:18] were people who were white person meet up from Johnson County coming down to buy crack cocaine. And so we marched on those, and we closed crack houses, over 300.
That's what brought George H.W. Bush to Kansas City. First Bill Bennett, the drug czar, and then George H.W Bush. And we became nationally, internationally known. We had people from Canada, people from the UK to come and march with us on these crack houses, and this kind of thing. And the president appointed me on the President Drug Advisory Council, 32-member group, multiracial, multicultural, and bi-partisan to serve and be advice to the president, as well as the Congress and subcommittee on narcotics and trafficking. So that's how the AdHoc Group got started. It got started, and we appeared on the front page of USA Today and as black men together, that was a group of black men, about 50, 60 black men who marched on these crack houses.
Kelly Scanlon:
And just to be clear, it was President George H.W. Bush who appointed you to the National Drug Advisory Council at that very critical time, and it's shown quite a spotlight on Kansas City, as well. Now the AdHoc Group has evolved. It is working with families of crime, of violence, and it is also trying to get at some of the root causes. Talk to us a little bit about, bring us up to date to where it is today.
Alvin Brooks:
Well, I've been gone for 10 years, and I try to stay out of my successor's way, Damon Daniel, a bright young man. I try to stay out of his way. And I think it's a group, too, that needs support, community support. From foundation they're trying to build a building, and I certainly encourage persons to contribute to that.
Kelly Scanlon:
As all of our listeners who've grown up here in Kansas City, they know you've held many leadership roles, mayor pro tem of Kansas City, as I mentioned earlier. You're the president of the Police Board of Commissioners, founder of the AdHoc, so many different roles. How were you able to navigate the different leadership challenges in such diverse capacities?
Alvin Brooks:
I'm a person who has deep faith roots. I talk to God daily, nightly. I wake up at night, and I talk to God and ask for guidance and direction that I'm on the right track and what I do, and to give me the strength and the intelligence to do what he would have me to do. I give him the credit. Sometimes I wonder, this little black boy from North Little Rock, Arkansas, who also I didn't mention earlier, that I was not supposed to live beyond age six because I had an ailment that no one knew what it was called.
I couldn't keep anything on my stomach. And someone told, an older doctor told my dad after my mother, Estelle Brooks, took me to St. Louis because I couldn't get treated in Arkansas because of segregation, but they told me that, told her they didn't know what they could do, because I'd end up dying from malnutrition because... But my dad bought a goat, a Saanen goat, G-O-A-T, goat, and put me on goat's milk. And I'm here at 92 years old in a few months, and I was on goat's milk until my junior year, until I finished my junior year in high school, so God has been a part of that in life for me.
And as I said, try to say, this little black boy that grew up in those conditions, segregation, treated very racist even on the police department, even after I came to the city when I was director, first black director in the city, Department of City Human Relations, 10 weeks after the riot in 1968, I've been to Africa on special projects in Southeast Asia, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The late Steve Durwood, father was founder of the AMC Theaters, wanted to go and study, see what happened with drug trafficking there with a group of eight persons and Senegal [inaudible 00:17:06] Gambia studied the food and water resources, been to the Mideast twice, Israel and then the east of Jordan, and International Conference on Muslim, Christian, Jewish Relations, been to Rome. All these were not vacations, but they were someone else paid the tab and had the part of the mission. And recognized by the president, both President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Obama. I was Obama's spokesperson for Western District of Missouri, and at that cold January 2009, I was there among those many, many people.
So I don't know, Kelly, and to your listening audience, I don't know why me. And sometimes I say, "Why me, oh, Lord." And I think the Lord says, "Why not you?" And I think that's the calling that we have as human beings to serve each other. I'm a believer, and I don't think we as Christians do this enough. And two of the great books, both the Torah, as well as the Bible, of course the first five books of the Bible is the Torah, but it says in the beginning, after God created heaven and earth and everything therein, the creatures that crawl, the fowl of the air, the fish in the sea, then decided to make humankind.
That's interesting the Creator did all that. Why didn't the Creator make humankind first? But he made everything else first, that we were the ones who were supposed to protect that, not only protect all of those fish in the sea, the fowl of the air, the creatures that crawl, the environment was our responsibility to keep. We've done a poor job. But at the same time it says that we're all made in the likeness and image of the Creator. I don't care who you are. I don't care where you live. Not only 230 million people and 330 million people in the United States of America, but the 6 billion people on earth, planet earth.
And most of the nation, I guess, profess to be Christian. There're certainly Jewish, and Muslim, and other faiths. The dominant faith in America is Christian. I wonder if any, as Christians, do we ever read that part of the scripture that says we made in the likeness and image of the Creator? Because if we did, that means there's a connection that we have to each other, brothers and sisters, regardless of whether we want to be or not.
And the question always arises, when are we going to act like we are Christians? Because if we're Christians, then we see our Jewish and our Muslim brothers and sisters and other faiths as our brothers and our sisters regardless of their faith. And I've become very cynical and critical when I hear the divisiveness that's taken place between people who consider themselves being Christians and even got into the politics of the day.
Kelly Scanlon:
You talked a lot about this too in your autobiography about your faith in your Binding Us Together autobiography. Then the documentary that you mentioned was just released on Juneteenth, the Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks.
Alvin Brooks:
Doesn't that sound intriguing?
Kelly Scanlon:
It does.
Alvin Brooks:
Doesn't it sound intriguing?
Kelly Scanlon:
The Heroic True-Life adventures. I love it.
Alvin Brooks:
Writer-producer of that is Kevin Willmott, who's a Academy Award winner for his writing, for his producing in the BlacKkKlansman with Spike Lee. He came up with that, and I asked him, when he sent it to me, he says, "How does this sound?" I said, "Great, great, great, great." And he said, "I was just trying to make it as intriguing and challenging," and it is when you say True-Life Adventures. Oh, my god.
Kelly Scanlon:
I don't think anybody would disagree that your life has been anything short of an adventure, that's for sure.
Alvin Brooks:
Oh, my god, yes, it has been.
Kelly Scanlon:
So how do you hope the film will impact younger generations and those who might not be familiar with your work?
Alvin Brooks:
Well, the film is 90 minutes, but it's animation in it. You've probably had about 2,000 people to see, well, pretty close to that, to see a number of screenings.
Kelly Scanlon:
The premier?
Alvin Brooks:
Yeah, the premier, and then after that, and then Lawrence, and then we did four here in Kansas City, five in Kansas City. But the animation in this is done by a professional, is so great and it really ties it together. And so I think that person can see that and say, "God, here is this interesting life that this person has."
Kelly Scanlon:
It's not just interesting, though. It's impactful. There's a difference.
Alvin Brooks:
Well, I'll let you say that.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yes, impactful.
Alvin Brooks:
That's good. Better you say that than me. It's like self-serving, I'm this and this. But it's challenging, also, this little black kid, who at about seven, eight years old, the kind of things that happened to him and us who we might, young black friends and my white friends, because they were impacted when I was called the N-word by police officers, when I was refused to be able to sit and have a coke at a drugstore. When I went to the old Velvet Freeze ice cream, when my white friends, we moved there, said, what we ought to do, we go around and collect pop bottles. You get two cents a piece for pop bottles at the time. And we'd take them, we'd get a nickel, and we'd go to the 31st and Indiana, the Velvet Freeze. And so it was my first time being [inaudible 00:21:46]. So we walked up there from where we lived by the Veterans Hospital, five of us, four or five of us together.
And so as soon as we got in, the manager who was a white kid senior at Central High School, prior to Brown versus Board of Education, he stopped me at the door, said, "You can't come in." I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because you're an N..." And I said, "What?" And that was my first was about, oh, that must've been about 1939 or '40, so I was eight or nine years old. And first I resented being called N-word. But then so what I had to do is give my white friends my nickel to bring my two dips of ice cream back out to me.
And the youngest of the group was Bobby, and Bobby was, he was the young, he was about six years old, but Bobby would tell everything. Although we did the blood test, Bobby would tell us. So he told my mother what happened, and my mother tried to explain. My mother never used the term racism, segregation. She talked about that, discrimination. And she was trying to explain to my white friends what all that meant, that we were all the same. My mother was not... As I say, she was a religious woman, but never attended. I only remember her attending church one time when one of her best friends passed.
Kelly Scanlon:
She lived a religious and spiritual life. Yeah.
Alvin Brooks:
My dad, I don't remember at all, except when my mother passed. And so after they left, she talked to me, after my white friends left, because my mother fed everybody, all the kids in the community. I was the only black kid. All the white kids would come. She always had bologna, and cheese, and peanut butter and jelly, and all that, and they would eat together. So after they left, she said it was time for you all to go home, and she said to me, so I came, and she had me to get down on my knees. This was the first time she had done that.
But she did it a number of times after when I was discriminated against, she had me get down. She had old green lime rocking chair. She had on one side was the bible, other side was a group, a stack of these Monday and evening Kansas City Star, Kansas City Times. And she was a great reader. And she would sing a little of the song Precious, Lord Take My Hand, and then she would read a little bit from the Bible. Excuse me. And she would pray this prayer, and I can hear Mama now, "God, help my baby to become the kind of man that you want him to be." And I often say, "God, I hope I please you and my mama after 92 years." But that gave me the strength.
And how many times, Kelly, how many times did my mother have to call me, even when I was 11 or 12 years old, when things would happen? And I never got home and told my mother what happened. It was always someone else that told, one of my white friends. God maybe set it that way, because I don't know where I had the strength or got the strength or the courage to speak out and act out against these kinds of injustices. I was on the Board of Regents in Central Missouri State University, and the ones that always came to me about injustice were white kids.
I never shall forget a couple of white girls came to Kansas City for a birthday party, but they got lost. So they had a curfew to get back in the dorm. So what they did drove their car up to back their dorm and went to sleep and security got them, and they got expelled, and their parents came to me. I was the only black member of the Board of Regents. And I said, "This is crazy. You know what the answer is," so I got them back in school. I had teachers to do the same thing. Not black students, but white students. So that's my life. I served three years on the Hickman Mills School Board.
Kelly Scanlon:
You just recently got elected in April to another term, another one-year term.
Alvin Brooks:
You see, I promised my daughters... I served 10 years. Jay Nixon appointed me to the Board of Police Commissioners, and I promised my daughters, oh, I have five beautiful daughters. I promised them that the police department was my last public hurrah. I lied.
Kelly Scanlon:
You did.
Alvin Brooks:
I lied. And so some of the school board members in the administration, teachers union and others asked me to run for a one-year term, and I did, and now I'm serving since April.
Kelly Scanlon:
Speaking of schools, the new community center at Rockhurst University has been named after you. Do you have an update on its progress? I know it's been pushed back a couple of times.
Alvin Brooks:
Yes. We had ground breaking in December of 2021. It didn't get started until this fall, but I think it'll be announced next month is when we'll have some ribbon cutting. And you see, I've said this when we spoke back in December of '21, please, for god's sake, and I pray to God this all the time. I don't want anybody saying, "Daddy's looking down at us from heaven." I want to be right there cutting ribbon. I don't want... Let the heaven be right there when I cut the ribbon.
Because one of my best friends just passed Thursday, and he was 91, he was from Kansas City, Kansas, the first black city council person in Kansas. We were both with the Corps, the crime racial Equality during those '60s and early '70s marching, sitting in, and protesting. And he passed away, and I'm just a year older. I think about the story was told these two old fellows who were great baseball players, and they played on the same team, and they'd be reminiscing about who knocked the most home runs, stole the most bases, who got them into the pennant in the World Series, and everything.
And so one of them said, "I wonder if there's baseball in heaven." The other one said, "That's a good question." He said, "Whoever dies first, come back and let the other one know." So one of them died, and he came back, and he said, "Oh my god, you're back." He said, "I got to ask you this question." He said, "IS there baseball in heaven?" He said, "Well, there is baseball in heaven." He said, "But I got some good news and bad news." He said, "Which one you want first?" He said, "The good news." He said, "Now there is baseball in heaven, but you're up for bat tomorrow."
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, no. You want to be holding the scissors at that ribbon cutting. You don't want to be-
Alvin Brooks:
Yes. I don't want to find are there are universities in heaven.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. Right, right. Oh, that's a great story. Again, you have a legacy that spans more than 70 years. You've talked about some of the profound changes that you've witnessed, but where do you see the city heading in the future?
Alvin Brooks:
Kelly, I'm an optimist, but I'm a realist, also, and the situation that's happening in America today with our politics, with the role of religious institutions and our people of 330 million in general, I see so much divisiveness based on race, ethnicity, the things of homophobia, and racism, and bigotry, and xenophobia, and all those things that divide us. And now we do different camps. We're red or blue or purple, and that bothers me.
And Kansas City is a microcosm of what all that's about. It's no different. And when you have that occurring, when it gets into the faith community... I always saw the faith community, regardless of which one of the faiths, has been the vanguard for righteousness. I saw it as being the moral conscience, as well as the moral compass, of who we are as human beings. We've gotten away from that. We are one issue-oriented people. We've become that. It's either this or that. But it takes all of that to make us what God wants us to be. We become one-dimensional, we become this is it, and the rest doesn't make much difference to us.
So a long way of... I'm not too optimistic for the future. When I hear and see what's happening, whether you're listening to CNN, or MSNBC, or Fox, or whatever, you see that there's so much division. If I'm right or partly right, one percent right, that our faith, the faith community, the leadership of the faith sees us, sees this role as being the moral conscience and the moral compass to where we go, the way we get there. There was an old African proverb that says, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there."
Kelly Scanlon:
True. I've heard that. Yes.
Alvin Brooks:
But so we ought to know where we are going so we can see you on a common road. We get there different ways, but at the end we are all together. You're much younger than I am. I have kids that are older than you, and I'm not going to tell your age at all. That's up to you. But I have kids that are older, and my youngest is 47, youngest daughter of five, and there's 74 descendants of Alvin and Carol brooks. We're good Catholics most of the time. And I loved the wife. Carol Rich Brooks has been gone, transitioned 11 years ago, the 21st of July.
And as I talked to my daughters, and my grands, and my great-grands who are teenagers, and my great-greats who are teenagers, they had the Brooks reunion here, the 21st or 23rd of June, but as I talk with them, they're so... Even the youngest ones, they don't realize what's going on to a great degree. When grandpa sat down, great-grandpa, great-great-grandpa sat down with them, and they were just amazed. "That happened to you? Did you get mad? Did you want to fight?" But they don't realize that they may experience some of the same things in 2024 that I experienced in 1930s and the '40s, and the '50s, and the '60s, and the '70s.
Kelly Scanlon:
So how do you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?
Alvin Brooks:
Well, I'd like, and I don't want to plagiarize what Dr. King and others said, who've gone before me, great men and great women, but just that Alvin Lee Brooks was serious about trying to improve the lot of his race and the connection between his race and God's creations, and that he saw people as fellow brothers and sisters, and he tried to teach his kids, and his grand, and those great and great-great that he was able to come in contact with, that they were no better, no worse than anybody else, but you be the kind of person that the Creator created you to be.
Kelly Scanlon:
What advice would you give the next generation of leaders as you pass the torch, which I suspect is going to be burning brightly until they've said the final prayers over you. But until that time, I mean the next generation of leaders, what would you advise them?
Alvin Brooks:
I have a number of proteges, both young black males and young females, and then my own family. I'm working with a group of young black men and young black women, who I think have their heads on right in politics and civic affairs involved in their respective congregations, becoming aware of what's going on in the world and how that relates to their everyday lives in this city or in this metro place. All of them aren't in Kansas City.
I'm very involved in my church, St. Monica of Africa Catholic Church, 17th and Paseo. I'm working with young black men there trying to make sure that they're part of the programs, and sometimes we as adults forget that there's a group called young folks, and their own kids or grandkids are great, so make them a part of what's going on. And I espouse it all the time. So that's what I'm doing. That's why I preach and teach, going to theological seminary, anything like that. But it comes from my heart.
I hope I've gained over these 92 years plus months some respect from a lot of people. I don't want to be egotistical. I don't want to think that I'm the only show in town. I'd much rather be in the background helping the next generation than be out front. You don't have to give me any accolades or any editorials. It's just something I think that God has given me the wisdom and knowledge and the guidance to do. And I always say, whatever your faith, realize that there's a god, that you're not totally in control. There's someone else that directs your destiny, and learn who that is, and try to live up to what that is regardless of what your faith is.
Kelly Scanlon:
Mr. Brooks, I will say it for you again. Your life has been very impactful. I firmly believe sitting here across from you today and seeing how vibrant you are, that even at 92, we haven't seen the last of that impact. And we thank you, though, for everything that you've done and to make not just Kansas City, but the country, a better place.
Alvin Brooks:
Thank you. I attribute it to God and my late wife. I owe so much to Carol LaVern Rich Brooks. Carol, I owe you so much along with God and everybody else.
Kelly Scanlon:
Thank you so much. We owe a lot to you, too, Mr. Brooks.
Alvin Brooks:
Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Alvin Brooks for joining us on this episode of Banking on KC. Mr. Brooks' life story is one of unwavering commitment to civil rights, justice, and the wellbeing of our city, especially our youth. His leadership has not only reshaped the landscape of Kansas City, it continues to inspire future generations to unite us for common good.
At Country Club Bank, we honor the legacy of leaders like Alvin brooks, those who stand up, speak out, and drive real lasting change. His impact on our community is immeasurable, and it serves as a powerful reminder of what one individual guided by purpose and a love for his fellow human beings can achieve. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.