Jesse Clyde Nichols

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Jesse Clyde Nichols (August 23, 1880 - February 16, 1950), better known as J. C. Nichols, was a prominent developer of commercial and residential real estate in Kansas City. His developments included the Country Club Plaza, the first suburban shopping center in the United States, the Country Club District (including Ward Parkway), Brookside, Mission Hills, Kansas and Prairie Village, Kansas, which together form the largest contiguous master-planned community in the United States. J.C. Nichols was the first to base the rents he charged his commercial tenants on a percentage of their gross receipts, now a common expectation in leases for retail space. He is also credited with creating a restrictive covenant model which led to widespread discrimination by prohibiting the sale of homes in his neighborhoods (particularly in the Country Club District and Mission Hills) to African Americans. He was prominent in Kansas City civic life, being involved in the creation of the Liberty Memorial, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Midwest Research Institute. His philosophies about city planning greatly influenced other developers in the United States, and can be seen in such communities Washington, D.C., Beverly Hills, California, and Houston, Texas. Modern outdoor shopping centers, now common in the United States, share a common ancestor in the Country Club Plaza, which opened in Kansas City in 1922. The Urban Land Institute's J. C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development[1] is named for him.

He is mentioned briefly in Robert A. Heinlein's novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

[edit] Nichols' influence on United States segregation in real estate

Restrictive covenants were a type of contract that obligated the purchaser of a property to comply with the provisions. In other words, the covenants were used for private land regulation. Many of these covenants continued in each subsequent sale, known in property law, as "running with the land." Fellow property owners could enforce the covenants in courts or sometimes local cities and counties provided enforcement.

J.C. Nichols was instrumental in providing an example for creation of planned neighborhoods all over the nation. Racial covenants he helped create were copied by many cities in the United States. In the Kansas City Metropolitan area, Nicholes helped structure these covenants to exclude the sale of the property to African Americans, Jews, and other ethnic "undesirables." Subsequently, these covenants "ran with the land." Some covenants restricted ownership by African Americans, Jews, etc. Others, especially those in Johnson County, Kansas, were even more restrictive. These used the so called "one-drop" rule or anyone who had 1/4 blood of "Semitic races." The language also trageted Armenians, Turks, and a host of Middle Eastern ethnic groups.

Most of these covenants were deemed unenforceable by state legislative acts, though to some extent enforcement was lax. In 1948, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court Shelley v. Kraemer (also see Shelley v. Kraemer), ruled racial covenants valid but unenforceable by the courts. In the years after Shelley, racial covenants continued to be recorded. The Fair Housing Act banned the practice in 1968. In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development implemented a rule require title companies to "cross out" the racial covenant language. Efforts have been made to remove these covenants from Nichol's former properties in Jackson County, Missouri and Johnson County, Kansas, counties that share a state line, but sentiment against it still exists. This can be seen in statements like Kansas state Senator John Vratil: "But state Sen. John Vratil said he did not see the issue as one the Kansas Legislature should get involved in. 'It's a local issue, and a homes association issue,' said Vratil, a Leawood Republican." (See link below "Home Ownership, Self-Determination, Restrictive Covenants, Redistricting....,")

These racial covenants can still be found in the property documents and deeds to property near Kansas City. One covenant stated, “None of the said lots shall be conveyed to, used, owned nor occupied by Negroes as owner or tenants.” (See Article below "Home Ownership, Self-Determination, Restrictive Covenants, Redistricting....,")

In Whitney Terrell’s novel, “The King of Kings County,” gives a fictional portrayal of racial covenents in the Kansas City suburbs. Readers can draw connections between J.C. Nicholes and Terrell's fictional character Prudential Bowen.

Nichols inovation shows how racial segregation could be enforced outside of governmental means.

[edit] Further reading

Schirmer, Sherry Lamb. A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960. Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri Press, c2002.

McKenzie, Evan. Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. Yale University Press, c1996.

Robert Pearson and Brad Pearson. The J. C. Nichols Chronicle: The Authorized Story of the Man and His Company, 1880–1994. Lawrence, Kan. : Country Club Plaza Press : Distributed by the University Press of Kansas, c1994.

Worley, William S. J.C. Nichols and the shaping of Kansas City : innovation in planned residential communities. Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri Press, c1990.