Missouri Heroes

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education, Heroes, history, Missouri, Missouri Delta, race, segregation

Schoolteacher explaining passage to pupil, La Forge, Missouri. School attended by Southeast Missouri Farms children. Photograph by Russell Lee, 1938. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), LC-USF33- 011607-M5.

From a journal article I’m reading: “On September 20, 1948, Lucinda Crenshaw, Carryola Dickson, Georgia Jones, Otelia Scaife, and Rosie Holman, all members of the North Wyatt [Missouri] Women’s Club, decided to take matters into their own hands. They walked their children from North Wyatt to the white elementary school, at the edge of the nearby town of Wyatt, and tried to enroll them in the school. They were denied permission on the grounds the state constitution of Missouri forbade African American and white children from attending school together. . . . Notes from a Delmo board meeting suggest the women were threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace.”

Just in case you are looking for ideas for a statue to replace some of those Confederate generals. And think about that date, too: 1948. These women were real pioneers.

Source: Heidi Dodson, “Race and Contested Space in the Missouri Delta,” Buildings & Landscapes 23:1 (Spring 2016), 78-101.

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