(dramatic music) - Junius Groves.

- Junius Groves.

- Junius Groves.

- Junius Groves.

- Junius Groves.

- Junius Groves, the Potato King of the world.

- [James] He's known as the Pota - The Potato King.

- He arrived here in 1879 with only 90 cents.

- 90 cents.

- And 90 cents in his pocket.

- [David] Had a lot of respect from both Black and white.

- He was determined.

- He was a hardworking man.

- To support the community.

- Very successful farmer.

- Nationally known.

- Groves becomes a millionaire.

- A millionaire.

- When Junius died.

- Just 60 years old.

- Heart disease.

- Heart attack.

- The big mansion.

- 22 room red brick mansion.

- Was destroyed in a fire - Starting an accidental fire.

- We were told that it was arson I'll just say that.

(dramatic music) (mellow music) (birds chirping) - So here we're at Ophelia's Blue Vine Farm.

This is my urban farm on 24th an (mellow music continues) Grandmother Ophelia, she was a phenomenal Black woman.

She was a seamstress by trade.

Grew up on a family farm in Arkansas over 100 years old.

Around Christmas time, she would the collard greens from the free and they would just taste so del That's really why I got int doing this urban farming thing.

When I had kids, I wanted them to have that experience and so really we just started it because I wanted them to know what I call real food tastes like, you know, real toma When I came to Kansas City, I fell in love with Kansas City and all of its rich history as far as African Americans, as far as jazz, and so I bought these lots back then and they didn't have anything on They were just wooded, but then over eight years, I was able to build up the infra I was working here inside Opheli and there was a honk at the door and I went out and I met Bob and Deborah Ford.

- They interviewed him down at V - I told my wife, I said "Look, I gotta meet this guy."

- And they were so inspired with what I was doing.

They came down and Bob said, "I'm farming, I'm getting out of the business.

I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know."

- I'm from Arkansas, I'm off a truck farm practice.

We pick cotton down there, but I came here when I was 12 ye I started working the fields when I was like 15 years old.

During the time and going into the military, I was ex-Marine, I did 22 years.

I went to Vietnam twice, and then when I came back, I started doing little farming and stuff like that, then I end up buying some property out here which we're on now.

This grows ground and take it ov - It's some good soil.

- Yeah, you can't beat the sandy loam.

- I was like, last year you gave me the spiral and I planted at the same time outside Ophelia's, you planted it here, and my plan you came by and you said, "Mike, Mike, is it up?

Is it up?"

I said, "I think, I don't see it."

And then Ms. Ward came out and s It was like, "There's one, there's one, there's one."

It was here.

- You planted- - Some of that okra never even got- - You planted thick because you- - Yeah.

- I would thin it out.

- [Mike] But it just didn't do t the dirt's not right.

- [Bob] We got the best in the world right here.

Tell me why you put that (indist (upbeat music) - Who knew that Edwardsville, Ka had some of the best soil, the sandy loam soil, and it's where a Black millionai who had come from slavery, had found his freedom and built his empire.

- I'm from the same land as Junius Groves' farm back in the 1800s.

- So Junius Groves was a man who figured out how to grow potatoes.

He was highly successful, so much in fact that he was a number one exporter of potatoes in the world.

(gentle music) - The mission of the Black Archives in Mid America is to collect, preserve, share, and exhibit the life and culture and history of people of African descent in this region.

Every one of the thousands of documents, artifacts, pictures that we have wer donated to the Black Archives, which makes them extremely speci because these are the artifacts that our community says are esse to identifying Black lives and c - The most interesting thing about Junius Groves, he was an agricultural producer.

Being an African American agricultural producer then was rare, and now it's rare He was doing at his time what I'm just starting to get in - So come on in to the archives, the Black Archives.

The Kansas Business Hall of Fame inducted Junius Groves three yea and they gave us this plaque.

- Junius Groves was born in 1858 depending on which source you lo He was born an enslaved person in Kentucky.

- We do know his father had enlisted in the Civil War and died of food poisoning.

- After the Civil War, of course, he gained his freedom at the age of six.

- At that point, his mother rema so Junius did have an older brot several brothers and sisters.

He also had several stepbrothers - And he lived with his mother and his siblings and stepfather until 1879.

- The Exodusters were African Am who left the South in the late 1 looking for a better life than what they were experiencing in the South and the really severe racism in the South.

There were people that were promoting states like Kansas as places that you would be able to experience a kind of freedom that you could not experience in the South and where you could get land through the Homestead Act to be able to make a better life for yourself and your family.

(footsteps crunching) (crickets chirping) - Around the age of 17 or so, Junius decided he would come to with a big Exoduster movement.

- He walked 500 miles.

Can you imagine walking 50 miles from Kentucky to Kansas?

(gentle music) (fire crackling) (crickets chirping) - When Junius Groves came here, he had 90 cents in his pocket.

He sharecropped with Farmer Williamson for a time.

- He proved good enough that Wil ended up making him the foreman, and renting him like six acres of his own land and allowed him to use his equipment to farm that.

- The railroad is changing a lot of things in America at this time, and by the early 1900s, in fact by 1900, Kansas City is larger than Los A It's one of the largest metropol west of the Mississippi River.

The railroads make it possible for men like Groves to ship their products far away.

And of course by the early 20th he is shipping potatoes, and probably other crops too, as far away as Mexico and Canada He's really a continental busine - He experimented on his own with the cultivation of the potato crop, which was his principle crop, but he also had vineyards, sawmi fruit trees, raised cabbage.

- So that he turned that patch o into a money-making venture for him in for his family.

(gentle music continues) - [James] He marries a woman named Matilda from Missouri.

She was only about 16 or 17 at t but they would go on to have 14 12 of whom lived to adulthood.

They were partners in every regard that we can see.

In the interviews that he gave and all the sources where he's on the record, he tal "We bought this land, we paid off that mortgage."

He always says we plural to incl - He brought a piece of land from a Native American lady.

He gave her $1,400 cash and paid another 1,400, using the sharecropping method.

- My name is Nina Kimbrough John and Junius Groves is my great-gr I heard about Junius Groves when I was a young child, and then just growing up I got more interested in him.

My mother was working to be able to preserve some of the history, many of his grandchildren have worked to preserve the hist and so it's been an ongoing thing where our family has tried to keep that history alive within the family.

- You know, I've studied Kansas and African American history and Western history for a long t and it's only been the last few when I started to see him as imp for all of the things that I've He lived during probably th worst time, racially speaking, that this country ever saw.

- Many times we want to keep things in a positive light, but we have to really be aware of what the times were.

These were the early 1900s, the late 1800s, and so there was tension.

There were also some thing that were not in the best light.

- He lived during a time when se was becoming the norm, when lynching violence was at an all time high, when all of the rights tha African Americans had been given after the Civil War by the Reconstruction Amendments were being taken away.

Anybody would feel depressed and debilitated, and yet it's during this time that Groves becomes a millionair - Our ancestors had it much harder than we have.

We really don't have any excuse not to do it.

Over eight years ago, me and my sons started farming on different lots in Kansas City and a lot of those we would rent so we just grew produce on these different lots.

We did what we could where we were with what we had.

We didn't know how the money was coming in, but we knew that we just kept taking steps forward, did the right thing, had a belie that it would turn out for us an (pensive music) - Wyandotte County History Museu has been in existence since the The collections of this museum are traditional collections.

They have been donated to the mu and collected by museum staff.

- A picture of Junius Groves holding the biggest cabbage I think I've ever seen in my lif - Yeah, I mean he was really the king of agriculture.

- I love the fact that there was not just potatoes, but there was an orchard with many, many vegetables, many, many fruit trees, and that he made sure that others were able to also ac - [Mike] Says this photo shows Junius Groves and his cabbage factory employee 1913 Groves founded the Groves C located at 98th and Kaw Drive.

- Junius Groves played a real ro in the development of that area.

He created a town called Groves - A regular little town from the sounds of it.

There was a lot of familie that were building homes there because Junius had sold them the - He took some of his land and allowed others to have their and have a house on that land.

- [Amanda] Some of the things he did was to build a church.

- Eventually he would open a grocery store.

- Golf courses, even though Black people paid city taxes and county taxes, they were rest from playing on the golf courses so he opened up a golf course for Black golfers.

- He employed over 50 men and women, Black and white.

- [James] And apparently the Uni even had a particular, a special railroad hub near his property just for the loading of the tubers.

- He did a lot of things to try to support the community, like creating a roller rink on his property so that young people would have wholesome things to do.

- The church that we're sitting he founded this church, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church.

- [David] He would have minor interest in banks, a casket company.

He also would end up owning several hundreds of acres in Western Kansas.

- He was a man of the community, that he really wanted to make sure that the community, that his family, that the children had the things that they need and he was very giving man and sharing man.

- [Susan] Junius Groves was well in his community and promoted his community and Negroes in business.

He was part of the Kaw Valley Potato Growers Association and a couple of othe business-related organizations.

- [David] He also had political connections.

At times, was a delegate to state conventions.

- And he built his empire to have two mansions.

Is that correct?

- I understand there were three The one that's most mentioned in is the 22-room red brick mansion that sat up on the hill above the railroad tracks.

- When he built his home, he made sure that he built things in the community that his children would be able to take advantage of.

He had places in his home for them to enjoy and play.

They could bowl, they had outside, of course, land, so he made sure that his communi that his family learned from him and that they were able t also aspire to home ownership.

- This is Junius in "The Kansas City Star" in 1910.

"The Negro does not get much encouragement in the cities.

The Negroes want to get out of t The farm is the place for them.

The race will go forward in the where its members are away from the evil influences of city life and the glamour and Before you deal with things like police harassment and poverty and lack o capital to develop urban areas, I think Junius would say a the very basic you need to eat, and before we even have relationships with other, people need a relationship with They need to know where tomatoes come from.

They need to know different kinds of potatoes.

They need to know the purity of their water.

If you don't know where you are, then you don't know who you are, and I think Junius would be the first one to say that that lesson applies to African Americans just as much as it does to anybo (pensive music) - So we've come a long way in tw and this was one of the first fi that the watermelon started to produce for us and they're still producing as we come out of the summer.

And it's been a wonderful summer Everything produced well.

(foliage rustling) So this is what I'm looking for.

The first tendril is good, yellow field spot, (knuckles tapping) color.

(knife scraping) That's a good sound.

It's a good sign.

(knife scraping) (watermelon splitting) It's much tighter.

Much tighter.

This is what we want.

(pensive music) - Junius Groves died in August o He did have a few health problem Sources say he dealt with rheumatism, heart disease, and finally, most sources say he died of the heart disease and/or a heart attack.

- I believe part of that may have been just brought on by extreme stress and strain.

- His funeral in August of 1925 in Edwardsville was the largest gathering that t had seen up to that point.

- They say that there were over 300 vehicles at the mansion.

11 ministers spoke.

- [James] His son, Walter Groves, gave a moving eulogy, from what we're told.

There was a strong presence of t there at his funeral.

- [David] It is said there were three to 5,000 people.

- Another banker from Commercial Bank said, "He is known as a man with exceptional ability, a keen insight, courteou manners, and good financial sens a citizen of unquestionable char - [James] It was a tribute to th in which they called him the greatest farmer that the race had ever produced.

(pensive music continues) - So today we're going to Franklin Cemetery and we're going to hopefully see where Junius Groves, the Potato King, is buried.

- This is the cemetery that Junius bought part of and this is supposedly where he' Nobody knows the grave site 100% or if they do, they're not telli but I speculate that he is right (somber music) - He did not want his grav marked at the time of his death.

There was grave robbing going on He was probably afraid that they would rob his grave.

- The information that we have received is that there was, everyone wasn't a fan of Junius and the empire that he built.

We were also told that when Junius G. Groves passed away, that there was a marker, a stone and that stone was stolen.

My mother says twice, "I don't want to be blinded by t that everybody thinks that everything was roses for an African American gentlema who had that much wealth and that much property in the early 1900s."

(somber music continues) - [Mike] And his wife died about a year after his death?

- Yes.

- Right.

She had been in ill health, and I think, I think she died of a broken hea - Wow.

- [David] I think she really died of a broken heart there.

- When he dies in 1925, he has a will already in place in which he has already made dec about where his estate is going and how it will be governed.

He essentially gave the executors of his will unlimited power to decide how it would be distributed to his children.

- It is my thought, knowin some of the history of Junius, he loved to sit on the porch and overlook the land and the property and the houses where his children and relatives He always said he was doing it f Well, if you keep that in mind, this is the high ground where could he overlook everyone - So this would be a perfect spo His land was over- - His land was that way there.

There's land along the road here that is still owned by the Grove But my thoughts are, this is pro where he is buried in this area 'cause he could overlook everyth - [Mike] Well, it just breaks my heart to see that he doesn't have tombstone in all that he's done in his incredible success throughout the world and how he's inspired a generation of people.

(somber music continues) - A lot of people feel like he came from nothing.

And one of the things, if I didn't say anything, I wanted to say that I believe he came from something.

He came from a wonderful family, from a family who loved him and and cared for him.

He got a good sense of work ethi and making sure that others were taken care of.

- As Farmer Bob told me the story of Junius, and it was a beautiful story, and then right as we got to the it just drops off, you know?

And so part of my fascination was that just doesn't, there's something more there.

- That's the really sad part of is that when you have someone of great wealth, at that time, I think tha everybody didn't necessarily lik the wealth that he had, and I would ask my mother that o What happened to the land?

What happened to the houses?

What happened to his tombstone?

The home that was burnt down in had not been lived in for about 18 months or so, but of course he had passed away in the 1920s, and so that was not the first house that burned.

And isn't it interesting that three houses burn?

Isn't it interesting that all of no one ever knew what actually h We were told that the KKK, that it was arson, I'll just say (dramatic music) Junius G. Groves was a man that loved his community and wanted to see others do bett Isn't that such a great example?

A great inspiration to want to make sure that our families, our neighbors, our community, is the best community that it co and my hope is that we continue and to continue to shar stories of wonderful Americans.

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