African American Experience in Missouri Lecture Series

Explore Missouri's past and prepare for the future through the African American Experience in Missouri lecture series. Launched in 2016, the African American Experience in Missouri series aims to offer the public a new understanding of present-day Missouri by learning about the history of African Americans within the state.

On Demand Programs

African American Experience in Missouri Lecture: 50 Years of Published Works by Gary Kremer

2024 marks fifty years since Gary Kremer, executive director of SHSMO, published his first essay on the African American experience in Missouri. Over the course of the past five decades, he has written dozens of articles and five books on the topic of race in Missouri, a publishing record unrivalled by any other scholar of the subject.

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African American Experience in Missouri Series Features Author and Historian Larry Gragg

Larry Gragg, author and Professor Emeritus of History at Missouri University of Science and Technology, presented a program on Nov. 2, 2022, at the State Historical Society of Missouri Center for Missouri Studies that examines the impacts of desegregation in Missouri higher education.

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Early Bird: Charlie Parker’s Life and Music in Kansas City

Chuck Haddix shares new information on Charlie Parker’s time in Kansas City, giving fresh insight into his formative years as a man and musician and will feature previously unknown photos, newspaper coverage, manuscripts and recordings that illustrate the emerging genius of Charlie “Bird” Parker.

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A Conversation with Sehon Williams and Bill Thompson

Civic leader Bill Thompson invites longtime resident Sehon Williams to look back on growing up in Columbia during the era of segregation, and the legacy of the Sharp End district that was home to black-owned businesses in the central part of Columbia. Sharp End was destroyed with the urban renewal movement of the 1960s.

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Nearby Nature in North City St. Louis: Black Residents, Nature, and Contested Green Space

The predominantly black residents of North City St. Louis live in neighborhoods where green spaces have been shaped by two legacies: formal green spaces associated with parks, cemeteries, and private streets that reflect the goals of pre-World War II city leaders, business people, planners, and residents; and informal green spaces created by urban renewal, population declines, and home abandonment since the 1950s.

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To Educate and Elevate: The African American Press in Missouri

The African American Press has a long history of agency and activism. Dating its founding from 1827 with the publication of Freedom’s Journal in New York, the press has a legacy of protest and a history of the struggle for survival. Between 1875 and 1970, Missouri was home to more than 60 black-owned newspapers. Debra Foster Greene looks at the lives and works of several African American newspaper publishers and editors in the Show-Me State.

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Lincoln University: Black Culture Mecca of the Midwest

Gary R. Kremer explores the history of Lincoln University from its founding by former Missouri slaves in 1866 through its emergence as a state-funded normal and vocational school to its establishment as the state’s only public institution of higher education for African Americans in 1921. Special attention is given to Lincoln University’s “golden years,” from 1921 through the mid-1950s, when it was often referred to as the “Black Harvard of the Midwest.”

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Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs

In his path-breaking book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, Colin Gordon combined GIS digital mapping techniques with extensive archival research to reach new perspectives on St. Louis’s decades-long struggles with depopulation, segregation, economic disparity, and urban decay. Gordon's current research continues to probe for deeper understanding of the underlying issues and failed policies behind urban crises such as the turmoil in Ferguson after Michael Brown was shot and killed by local police on August 9, 2014.

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Making their Marks: Voice and Violence in Colonial St. Louis

In histories of colonial St. Louis, people of African descent appear most often as enslaved men and women forced into doing the hard labor of settlement. Traces of their existence are visible in records relating to slave auctions and census documents enumerating their presence in households, but the fabric of their daily lives can be difficult to recover. Patricia Cleary, author of The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: A History of Colonial St. Louis, will illuminate the vital roles African Americans played in the early village on the Mississippi, exploring how they experienced violence and expressed themselves in a community frequently torn by discord and unrest.

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Margaret Bush Wilson and the Promise of America: A Pragmatic Civil Rights Vision

Priscilla Dowden-White explores the life and legacy of St. Louis attorney and NAACP leader Margaret Bush Wilson. In her lifelong struggle to advance freedom and equality for African Americans, women, and all those who were excluded from the mainstream of society, Wilson blazed a courageous trail marked by landmark legal decisions and major civil rights advances that opened doors to equal opportunity for all. Dowden-White examines the philosophical viewpoints and experiences that shaped Wilson’s definition of justice and fairness for all.

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