Thursday, March 29, 2018

St. Louis: History Museum: #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit


#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.


I learned about the #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit at the Missouri History Museum through the Readings on Race Book Club at the Ferguson Municipal Library.

Although I'm not much of a museum person, the exhibit captured my attention for about an hour.

I plucked the bits that I ingested on the spot or that I will investigate more deeply in the future.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.


Harriet Scott?! Why had I only heard about Dred Scott all these decades of my life? Here is one story of Harriet Robinson Scott's adult life. In this account, we learn that Harriet Robinson was only 16 when she married Dred Scott. This suggests another story, untold. Further, because the legal status of children of enslaved persons followed the maternal line (i.e. if the mother was enslaved, then her children were also enslaved), one could argue that Harriet Scott's name should have been the more prominent one on the Supreme Court case, as the futures of their two children depended on the outcome of the case.


#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.



It was only a few weeks before I visited the History Museum that I learned about the East St. Louis Massacre. The confounding range of estimated killed between 40 and 200 reminds me of the similar obliqueness about the Opelousas Massacre.


#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.


 The above quote by William Wells Brown countered the mealymouthed exhibit on slavery in the state capitol's history exhibit.


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