St. Louis History in Black and White

St. Louis has the dubious distinction of being one of the most racially polarized cities in the nation. However, it would be unfair not to acknowledge that many other cities also have had, and still have, problems with race relations.Three black African Americans of separate generations sat down together at the St. Louis History Museum to talk about their experiences growing up black in St. Louis, and their impressions of how the black experience changed for them here over the years. Mariah Richardson is a playwright, actress and teacher. She attended desegregated schools in St. Louis. Donn Johnson is a retired broadcast journalist who grew up on both sides of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Percy Green is a lifelong civil rights activist. He was in the vanguard of the civil rights movement in the late fifties through the early sixties, and ever since, primarily as a civil disobedience strategist.

New information reveals that Harriet Scott, who was involved in the original suit for freedom with her husband, lived for a decade after the Civil War. The Scotts had two children. Eliza and Lizzie were given the protection of anonymity during the fractious period during which the Scotts sought emancipation. Genealogist Ruth Ann Hager of the St. Louis County Library did the research, which is outlined in her book Dred and Harriet ScottTheir Family Story.

When Barack Obama was elected president he acknowledged that the historic election of a black man was only possible by his standing on the shoulders of those who had fought for ending discrimination and racism in previous decades and generations. Among two of the best known of this group in St. Louis were the late Margaret Bush Wilson and activist Norman Seay. She served nine terms as the chairman of the national Board of Directors of the NAACP and was president of the St. Louis chapter. She was a lawyer-activist and assisted her father as he worked on ending housing discrimination. His work led to the famous 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer Supreme Court decision that put an end to restrictive covenants used against blacks. Norman Seay was active for decades in fighting discrimination. He was jailed for ninety days for his role in 1963 demonstrations against the discriminatory hiring practices of the Jefferson Bank in St. Louis. In the days following President Obamas election, they reflected on the history of the event, and of events which preceded it in which they were involved.

Ethnic cleansing is not something that is peculiar to Nazi Germany, Rwanda or Bosnia. American history shows that many communities here are guilty of it too. These communities banished their black citizensoften violently. Many of these communities remain virtually all white to this day. Brothers Charles and James Brown traced their family tree to Pierce City, Missouri, and learned their ancestors had been forced out at gunpoint. Marco Williams produced a documentary titled BanishedHow Whites Drove Blacks out of Town in America.

Judge Theodore McMillian was a man of many firsts: as one of the first black students at the St. Louis University School of Law, he graduated first in his class; he was the first African-American assistant prosecutor for the City of St. Louis, and later the citys first black judge. He was the first black member of the Missouri Court of Appeals-Eastern District and the first African American to reach the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. One of his early clerks was St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Lisa Van Amberg who remembers that Judge McMillian wrote landmark decisions on desegregation, free speech, civil rights, employment discrimination, and affirmative action.