Mattie Rhodes

 Mattie Rhodes Society, Little Gleaners, Westside, charity

 

 

 

Born in 1871, a young Mattie Florence Rhodes devoted herself to the care of the less fortunate, particularly the disparate Hispanic community in Kansas City, Mo. Focusing on the Westside neighborhood (much like Irene H. Ruiz and the Guadalupe Center) Rhodes and nine other young women with a similar interest banded together, establishing The Little Gleaners. The small organization was named for an historic people who survived by salvaging leftover crops after farmers had reaped them. The Little Gleaners chose this name intentionally; their mission to “pick up” the people society had seemingly forgotten — the girls pledged their lives to the needy and suffering. As a part of the Sunday school class at Central Presbyterian Church, The Gleaners formed sewing clubs to help provide the children’s hospital with clean linens and clothes for poverty-stricken families. The ladies would sew and sell gingham aprons at a meager 25 cents apiece and potholders for seven cents to help raise money for supplies. They also hosted fashionable lawn socials.

 

Sadly, Mattie contracted typhoid fever. She passed at age 19. This amazing woman improved thousands of lives in such a short time, and her legacy, the Mattie Rhodes Center in the Westside, lives on. On her deathbed in 1890, Mattie left her life savings to the Gleaners to carry on her good work. That they did, founding the Mattie Rhodes Memorial Society before erecting the Mattie Rhodes Center, which now provides anything from mental health services to public art classes.