"Quindaro" Short-Subject Documentary Trailer
Quindaro is the story of an African American community in the northeast area of Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) struggling to retain a semblance of its historic heritage while forces, both internal and external, seek to define what the community’s future will be.
Founded in 1857 on the banks of the Missouri River in the Kansas territory, the township of Quindaro was part of the Underground Railroad - a network of safe houses that enabled slaves to escape to freedom. Given that historical record, it was certainly ironic that in the late 1960s, the state of Kansas acquired areas of the Quindaro neighborhood and displaced African American residents through Imminent Domain to construct Interstate 635. Twenty years later in the mid 1980s, Browning-Ferris Industries purchased land in the Quindaro area with the plan of creating a landfill. Unlike with the construction of I-635, this time the residents of Quindaro fought back.
The film Quindaro explores the complexities between a community’s desire to define itself, what happens when members within the community disagree about what that definition should be and how local and state governments and private industry can forever alter the course of the discussion - often with unintended, detrimental consequences.