What’s Your KCQ is a collaboration between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library series that answers your questions about the history, people, places and culture that make Kansas City unique. Have a suggestion for a future story? Share it with us here, or email our journalists at [email protected].
Seventy-Five years ago this month, Kansas City experienced its worst natural disaster when the swollen Kansas (Kaw) River topped the levees protecting industrial districts and communities on both sides of the state line. Two months of heavy rainfall resulted in then-unfathomable devastation that still reverberates today.
KCQ looks back at the 1951 Flood ahead of a new Kansas City Public Library exhibition, “Hell and High Water,” which opens at the Central Library on July 11.
Black Friday
Flooding began on the evening of July 12, 1951. The following day, July 13, saw such destruction that it earned the name Black Friday.
From May through July, monthly rainfall totals in Kansas and Missouri were three to four times higher than usual. Locals joked about building arks, because in some areas it had literally rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Between July 9 and July 13 alone, parts of the Kansas River basin received 18.5 inches. Unable to hold any more water, the banks of the Kaw began to overflow…