KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A book about a murdered civil rights leader in Kansas City is shedding new light on the controversial killing that went unsolved for 40 years.
Leon Jordan was a prominent African American leader, a police detective and a political powerhouse. His murder was unsolved until last year, when police took a fresh look at the cold case and found startling new evidence. Now a new book about Jordan explores the details of his life and his death.
Robert Farnsworth has more than just a passing fascination with the life of civil rights and political leader Leon Jordan. He was Jordan’s friend, they met while working together during the civil rights movement.
“He was disappearing from the public view and I felt like he was grossly under appreciated,” he said.
Farnsworth’s book digs into Jordan’s history, his prominent African American family, his time as a police detective and his travels to Africa to start a police force in Liberia. And then there’s Freedom Inc., a political organization Jordan started to fight the mafia’s political control over the black community in Kansas City.
“His theme was to drive the plantation bosses out and he literally did that,” he says.
Jordan was murdered in front of his Green Duck Tavern at 26th and Prospect in July 1970. The case remained unsolved for 40 years until last year police reopened the case. In a strange twist, the murder weapon was thought to be lost, but was found being used as a police service weapon. Detectives and prosecutors have now pinned the murder on three men, all now deceased. Farnsworth details the investigation and how the killers were finally identified in the book. But he hopes people focus less on his death and instead look at his friends important work in his life.
“Leon was an old time political leader and he was very effective and he brought the civil rights revolution to Kansas City politics,” said Farnsworth. “He made Freedom Inc. and the black community a significant politically independent entity.”
Farnsworth’s book is officially released at a ceremony at UMKC Thursday, but it’s already online. Click here to read it.
