Missouri History Museum
St. Louis
When talking about cities that played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement, St. Louis does not typically come to mind. But the city was part of several important civil rights events, and those stories come to life for visitors to the Missouri History Museum.
“That’s the biggest surprise to people, because they don’t think of St. Louis in that way,” said Tami Goldman, tourism and group sales manager. “I grew up in St. Louis, but I would say that at least 70 percent of the information about that time that we have here, I did not learn about in school. What we offer has national appeal and is just the tip of the iceberg of St. Louis stories.”
For example, what is known in some historical references as the first civil rights demonstration on the continent took place in St. Louis in 1819 when free blacks and ally whites protested the impeding admission of Missouri into the Union as a slave state.
This and other significant events relative to the city’s human rights struggles are well documented in Seeking St. Louis, Currents and Reflections, one of the museum’s core galleries. Tour groups can also request a special Show and Tell in the library and research facility, where in an intimate, behind-the-scenes setting, they will have an exclusive opportunity to explore many artifacts and items of memorabilia not on display to the public, and to engage in a question-and-answer session with museum curators.
Now through April 15, 2018, groups can also enjoy a special exhibit titled “No. 1 in Civil Rights: The African-American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis.” The exhibit offers a significant narrative of ground-level activism, including four precedent-setting civil rights Supreme Court cases tried there: Dred Scott v. Stanford in 1857, Gaines v. Canada in 1938, Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, and Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. in 1968. The experience is coupled with live, interactive performances from Missouri History Museum Activists who portray researched, true-to-life figures recounting the St. Louis African-American struggle for freedom.
“The exhibit also does a comparison to aspects of the fight for equality from the 1800s, through the actual civil rights movement to today, with the riots that happened most recently in East St. Louis and Ferguson,” Goldman said. “A lot of our guided tours are created so that they are not one-sided, but facilitated dialogue used as a touchpoint to invite conversation.”
