On Thursday, KCTV5 published a story with a headline so historically illiterate it deserves its own exhibit at the Negro Leagues museum: “Plaza to host inaugural ‘816 Day’ celebration honoring Kansas City pride.”
Inaugural.
That word is doing an Olympic amount of lying, and Black Kansas City caught it before the ink dried.
Because we know, the way you know your own birthday, that 816 Day was not born this week in a Plaza marketing meeting. It was born in the mind of Brian “Bizzy” Benton, one of the most beloved promoters and entrepreneurs this city has ever produced, and it has been shutting down whole districts (safely and NEVER having any violence involved) every August 16 for nearly a decade.
Here is the actual origin story.
The idea came when somebody in a Facebook group asked a simple question: why doesn’t Kansas City have its own day like other big cities? This inspired Brian “Bizzy” Benton to create the first celebration at KC Jukehouse in 2017, in a room about 1,200 square feet, roughly the size of one Plaza storefront’s shoe section.
By 2018, the celebration had an official proclamation from Mayor Sly James. By 2019 it had taken over the historic 18th & Vine district as a full block party with a vendor market, a Kids Zone, and a Black Film Fest. It kept growing. Through a pandemic. Through every obstacle that comes with being a Black man trying to build an institution in a city that was engineered, street by street and deed by deed, to make sure Black people couldn’t build institutions.
What started in a juke joint became a half-mile block party, then took the Power & Light District, and this year it stretches across four full days, August 13 through 16, from the Rock Island Bridge to downtown, with a youth showcase, a community dance night, and a theme that tells you everything about who this day belongs to: “The Spirit of 816: Everyday People.”
Anyone who has ever produced a citywide event knows what lives underneath that growth. The permits. The insurance. The vendor coordination. The security plans. The sponsors who ghost you in June. The 4 a.m. load-ins and the personal credit cards quietly bleeding so the community never sees a seam.
Bizzy has carried that weight every summer since 2017, and he carried it so well that the whole city, including its mayor, treats August 16 like a civic holiday.
Black Kansas City Is Not Playin Bout Bizzy
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about this entire episode is how much you realize that Black Kansas City don’t play about Bizzy. Just look in the comments, where the community conducted its own press conference and delivered a better editorial than anything I could write here;
What you see above is a community that has watched this movie before. It watched white Kansas City discover jazz after policing the people who made it. It watched barbecue become a tourism brand while the East Side neighborhoods that perfected it were starved of investment. It watched 18th & Vine get celebrated in brochures and neglected in budgets. Black Kansas City can smell an extraction economy from across the state line, and it clocked this one in real time, ten thumbs-up reactions at a time.
As for the man himself, Bizzy responded the way he always has, with receipts and an open hand. He reminded his people that years ago, when doubters said moving the celebration to Power & Light would let “them” take 816 Day, he answered: “the only ones that can let them take 816 Day are people like you, because I’m not going to let them take a damn thang.”
He says he holds the trademark to 816 Day, and that nobody can host, promote, or sell merchandise for an independent event under that name without his authorization.
What Happens Next
The Plaza and KCTV5 have an easy road here. Correct the record. Retire the word “inaugural.” Call the man. Pay the man. Make an apology and take accountability.
The real 816 Day runs August 13 through 16, all across downtown. Pull up. Bring the kids. Spend your money with the vendors. And when you pass the man who made it all from a Facebook post and a dream, do what this city’s media apparently cannot.
Put some respek on his name.
