"Junius George Groves" (1859-1925)

A successful,self educated  farmer,landowner,and entrepreneur,became one of the most

prosperous African-American men in the early twentieth century.Junius was born enslave in Green County,Kentucky.His parents were Martin Groves and Mary Anderson Groves.Two decades later,as a freedman possessing ninety cents,he made his way to eastern Kansas during the time of the exoduster Movement of ex-slaves from the south.Junius began farming by sharecropping near Edwardsville,Kansas.In 1880,he married Matilda E.Stewart of Kansas City, Missouri.Within in a few years,they purchased their own land.Much of Junius success was due to his forty-six years of devotion to the science of agriculture.He earned the title "Potato King of the World"in 1902 for growing the most bushels of potatoes per acre than anyone else in the world up to that point in time.The couple's twelve surviving children (out of fourteen) helped with the farm and family holdings.By 1900 bought and shipped potatoes,fruits,and vegetables,extensively throughout the United States,Mexico and Canada.They family also owned and operated a general merchandise store in Edwardsville,possessed stock in mines in Native-American Territory and Mexico,stock in Kansas banks,and majority interest in the Kansas City Casket and Embalming Company.Junius co-founded the State Negro Business League and later served as its president.He also founded the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church Society in 1886.He was also elected secretary of the Kaw Valley Potato Association in 1890 and Vice President of the Sunflower State Agricultural Association in 1910 in those years.Junius surpassed financial parity with most whites in contemporary Kansas and in the process combated racism by example and by providing economic opportunities to blacks and whites with a particular emphasis on uplifting his race.During the busy farming season,for example,Junius  employed up to fifty mostly black laborers.He founded Groves Center,an African-American community near Edwardsville in the early 1900s.He also established a golf course for African-Americans,perhaps the first in the United States.Junius was one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the nation by the first decade of the 20Th Century.His holdings were estimated to be worth $80,000 in 1904 and $300,000 by 1915.The Groves family mansion,a 22-room brick home,compete with electric lights,two telephones,and hot and cold running water in all of the bedrooms,was the largest in the area and had its on railroad spur.Junius died Edwardsville.