Buried Truth

It would be a playground for Porsche and Ferrari owners who long to push their speedometers into the red. Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2008 for a 2009 opening. Plans for the KCI Motorsports Park — naming rights are for sale — show manicured lawns surrounding two immaculate road courses that could be merged into one 3.75-mile circuit. Ameni­ties, according to the track's Web site: a separate go-kart track, an exclusive clubhouse with views of the racing, a cafeteria and a pro shop. Flyover property near KCI seems perfect for the site, especially after planning officials from FastTrack's first choice in Miami County, Kansas, rejected the project in 2005 because of noise concerns.

The lowest price for a membership is $15,000 a year, preconstruction, for a motorcyclist. (The cost of a membership will go up after the track is built.) A single go-kart driver pays $35,000, which doesn't include access for his or her family. A better-heeled member who wishes to test the limits of his machine can pay $85,000 preconstruction or $100,000 postconstruction for a "founding membership."

Rick Watkins has not responded to The Pitch's repeated requests for an interview, but, according to the Web site, work on the track "was moved back one year to allow the Aviation Department time to resolve a lawsuit unrelated to this project."

That lawsuit is related to the project, however, because if it isn't resolved, FastTrack can't break ground. Standing in its way are four marked pioneer cemeteries on the acreage. The city of Kansas City, Missouri, filed suit in Platte County Court on February 22, seeking permission to remove all of the remains from these cemeteries and reinter them in a centrally located fifth cemetery not in the path of development.

The real holdup is the unmarked slave cemetery.

Warren Watkins, Jackson and others are sure that it's on that same 300 acres. Shafer appointed Shaw to represent these unknown dead, and today, at the Platte County Courthouse, Shaw is asking Shafer's permission to go digging for them.

Lowell Gard, an attorney for the city, steps up to his lectern and complains to Shafer that the city already hired an archaeologist, Craig Sturdevant, who drove a backhoe into one of the areas thought to be the slave cemetery, dug and found nothing, at a cost of $5,000. Shaw wants any new excavation to be done quickly and wisely, "so we don't spend another several months just prospecting."

Gard adds that he has doubts about dowsing. Sometimes called "witching" or "divining," the practice involves walking over an area with a metal or wood rod held parallel in each hand; when the rods cross, they supposedly indicate the presence of water, metal or other objects underground. Platte County cemetery sextons and amateur historians use the method to locate underground graves. "The scientific basis for it, I think, is nearly nil," Gard says.

Shaw replies that Warren Watkins and others don't want to search the entire 300 acres, only a small, specific site identified through locals' stories, dowsing rods, and deliberately placed red rocks thought to mark the graves. The city won't spend a dime, Shaw explains, because there is a volunteer archaeologist willing to do the work for free.

Shafer grants Shaw's motion to let an archaeologist check out the site, provided that the work is completed before December 10, the next scheduled court date in the cemetery matter.

When the hearing ends, the benches empty and a small group convenes in the courthouse hallway. Warren Watkins explains the court proceedings to Jackson, who couldn't hear.

"They want to move it, but after so many years, I wonder if they know what they're doing," Jackson says.

Jackson and her 104-year-old aunt, Katharine Mace, remember Mace's great-grandmother, who was born into slavery and was buried somewhere in Platte City. She was missing a leg but could still ride a horse. "She sat in a rocking chair, and she was good, as far as her mind was concerned, but she couldn't walk so well because they'd mistreated her," Jackson says.

Standing just outside the courtroom doors is a gray-haired woman with a stick-straight back and a rolled-up cemetery map clenched under one arm.

Unlike the city's maps, Shirley Kimsey's includes a tiny square marked "Slave Cemetery." Kimsey says representatives of the State Historical Society of Missouri told her that she knows more about Platte County's dead than anyone in their office. People who visit the courthouse for historical information are directed to Kimsey's clothing shop, called Shirley's Fashion Center, across the street from the courthouse. Near the dressing rooms, she keeps a microfiche machine with articles dating back to 1871.

Platte County planners asked Kimsey to use her dowsing rods to determine the placement of unmarked graves before a cell-phone tower was erected on land near a cemetery.

"I think they're full of bull," Kimsey says of the city's attorneys. "Cemeteries all over the United States use witching rods."

Kimsey would prefer that none of the graves on city land be disturbed. She's not against progress, but she doesn't trust the city to care properly for the graves that stand in the way of development.