Kansas City News Blog

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Kenneth Walker went out to get the mail and found two brand new bikes sitting on his front porch.

It was Christmas in July for a local cycling advocate, who woke up last week to find a pair of shiny, new toys on his front porch.

Three years ago, when his son, Christian, stood on the winners’ block at the Tour of Kansas City bike race, Kenneth Walker thought to himself, “My two sons aren’t the only African American kids in this city who could do this.” In 2005, though, Christian was the first black participant to claim victory in the decades’ old event.

Since then, Walker has been working to increase cycling in the urban core. He started the Major Taylor Foundation of Greater Kansas City in 2005, organizing education and rides for inner-city youth. After leaving that organization in March, he started work on a new Urban Kansas City Community of Cycling project. Just days after he put his new efforts online, an anonymous donor gave him a push in the right direction.

Since he departed the Major Taylor Foundation, Walker hasn’t been idle. This summer, he worked with 10 students at the Genesis School, an alternative middle school for inner-city youth, to introduce them to cycling. On the first day, Walker says, some of the kids could barely make it a mile and had to walk their bikes back to the start. By the end of the four weeks, though, the group was pedaling 30 miles a day, logging 170 miles in the final week.

With the $1,500 he earned from that contract, Walker says he got the Urban Kansas City Community of Cycling off the ground. Last Monday, his new website went live. The following Thursday morning, he stepped outside, coffee still in hand, and found two brand new bikes sitting on his porch. Attached to the bikes, an anonymous note applauded his work in the community and asked him to keep it up. Walker says they probably cost about $200 each; not exactly high-end but priceless in their message.

“Those bikes were just validation, that people see value in my work and they want me to continue,” he says. “So I will.”

Not just with kids, either, he adds.

“There are, I’m sure, plenty of African Americans who ride bikes here in KC,” he says. “However, from what I can tell, they’re not really integrated into the cycling community. I used to try to figure that out, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m just going to change it.”

Until that change happens, Walker says he’ll be easy to spot this Saturday. Along with his two sons, he’ll be competing at the Tour of Kansas City, the place his urban cycling efforts started three years ago.