The only document used by the St. Joseph School District to inform students and teachers of how desegregation was carried out in their school system is a 17 minute video which was produced by the district. The video, entitled Segregated St. Joseph: A Look Back, is the recording of an informal discussion moderated by Jim Blakely, a white veteran social studies teacher for the district. In the video Mr. Blakely interviewed Harold Slater, a locally recognized historian of St. Joseph happenings who was also white. The third member of the dialogue panel was Bill Washington. Mr. Washington was the former principal of Lincoln, a black elementary school which was closed due to desegregation and had also served as the librarian for Bartlett, the black high school in St. Joseph. As I watched the video, I was disturbed by the way in which leading questions were addressed to Mr. Washington. I was also uneasy about the way in which he readily agreed with this leading. I was particularly disturbed by the way in which it was communicated that desegregation was accomplished very smoothly. For instance, at one point Mr. Blakely asked of Mr. Washington, "Despite the fact that we had segregation in many, many different areas, from what you’ve said and from what I’ve always understood, the, uh, the desegregation was a very smooth, fair process. How do you account for that?" (Mason, 1989). Not only was the transition reported as smooth, it was also allegedly accomplished with deliberate haste. 

    Mr. Slater elaborated on the speed with which the school board acted to support the Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka (1954) decision. He stated that the St. Joseph school district claims to be the first in the nation to vote in support of desegregation. He reported the following: 

    In actuality, the board met two days later, on May 19, 1954, in a special session to determine their response to the ruling of Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka (1954). The board attorney’s report stated that "all state laws pertaining to segregation in Missouri are automatically void. There is no requirement for the state legislature to take any legal action" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, May 19, 1954). The board then directed the attorney to get a copy of the ruling and recessed, with the next meeting to take place on May 26. What is interesting about this special meeting on the nineteenth is that the minutes for that meeting are very sparse. In fact, there was little beyond what is reported above. Yet the record shows the meeting was in session for two hours. Obviously, there was much discussion regarding desegregation. Furthermore, contrary to the official record as presented in the video, no formal decisions were made by the board until they could read an official copy of the desegregation ruling. The next regular session of the board, meeting on May 26, included, along with other business, the attorney’s interpretation of the ruling and his desegregation recommendations for the St. Joseph school district. His interpretation began with these words: "Where there are facilities for integrated school programs, such programs should be provided for in the next term of school. I regard this as mandatory" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, May 26, 1954). He went on to indicate that he did not believe the board would be held responsible to integrate school buildings which were already overcrowded as this would mean "letting out some who are already there" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, May 26, 1954). Of course, the "some who are already there" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, May 26, 1954) were white students. The board decided to continue the three "colored" elementary schools for "all those in their respective areas on a voluntary basis and for the purpose of taking care of any overflow that might result in other schools" but that "this would not be a separation because of racial origin but because of educational necessities" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, May 26, 1954). All summer classes offered by the district were immediately integrated. However, the three elementary schools, Lincoln, Douglass, and Bartlett Elementary, were not integrated in the upcoming school year as implied in the video. The July 12th meeting of the school board formalized the continuation of the three black elementary schools for the next school year and also ruled that "in view of the fact that the teachers are now under contract for the next year, it would be advisable to assign them to the same buildings where they taught this year" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, July 12, 1954). As late as 1964, Bartlett elementary remained segregated. The October 26, 1964 News-Press reported that, "One school, Horace Mann [the old Bartlett elementary], serving a completely Negro district, has only Negro students." 

    This report, in the form of a video, does not represent lapses in memory or innocent mistakes but is that which the St. Joseph School District has chosen to use as the official knowledge of the desegregation of the school district and was intended to be used as curriculum, as indicated in the conclusion of the video. It is listed in the video resources catalog along with other video curriculum used within the district. This video is housed at the central depository for media and is available to be checked out by any teacher in the district. School curriculum, such as this, is not neutral knowledge (Apple, 1993) but is the result of choices to present reality in a biased way. Michael Apple stated that such examples of official knowledge are "messages to and about the future" (p. 49) and that they participate in communicating what members of the dominant social group have approved as "legitimate and truthful" (p. 49). The message of the video is one of an accepting citizenry who easily recognized that the time had come to end segregation. What is problematic about this video and the impression that is left with the viewer is that St. Joseph and the surrounding region have a history of racism which could rival that of many cities of the deep South. 

    In fact, only twenty years earlier a black youth was taken from the county jail, lynched, and burned by a mob numbering in the thousands ("Mob Hangs Attacker," 1933). Two years before that lynching, a young black man, accused of raping a white girl, was lynched and burned in a nearby town 40 miles to the north ("Mob Hangs Attacker,", 1933). Another black man was lynched in a nearby town across the border some forty years earlier, although in this very peculiar case, both the victim and the lynch mob were blacks (Slater, 1988). Beyond each of these outrages there is evidence of commonplace discrimination and racism having to do with segregated services and facilities, what has been called by one set of researchers "persistent segregation" (Greene, Kremer, & Holland, 1993). For instance, blacks were not allowed full access to theaters and restaurants. I clearly recall from the early 1950s the way in which black patrons were not seated in restaurants and were only allowed to order food at the cash register. Even within the video Mr. Slater shared examples of racist attitudes and acts which preceded school desegregation. He stated that in 1954, the same year as the Brown decision, the Harlem Globetrotters were not allowed to attend a matinee performance at a downtown facility (Mason, 1989). Although they were performing nightly at the arena for the enjoyment of all, they were denied their own enjoyment at the Missouri Theater in downtown St. Joseph. Neither was there room in the inn for blacks (Mason, 1989). Since not a single hotel allowed blacks as guests, black visitors to St. Joseph were forced to find accommodations in homes opened to them by local black citizens. Marion Anderson was not admitted when she visited St. Joseph; neither was Aunt Jemima, here on an advertising tour (Mason, 1989). The most prestigious hotel in St. Joseph, however, was forced to become an exception to the rule in 1943 when Jack Benny warned that his wartime radio show would cancel its St. Joseph engagement unless the Robidoux relented and allowed Eddie Anderson, who played the part of Rochester, to stay at the hotel (Mason, 1989; Terry, 1978; Slater, 1998). Not only were Anderson and his wife able to stay in the hotel for four days and nights, Benny also punctuated his support of Anderson by showing up at a party the black community hosted for Anderson and his wife (Slater, 1998). Because of Benny’s great star power, and the fact that he was white, Anderson was able to do what Joe Louis was unable to do when he stopped in St. Joseph on a boxing tour of the nation. Although Louis was also a great celebrity, he had to sleep in his private train car when he boxed in an exhibition match in St. Joseph (Mason, 1989; Slater, 1998). 

    One of the most insulting discriminatory practices shared on the video had to do with the city swimming pool. When the Brown decision was reported, the mayor of St. Joseph announced all public facilities were open to black citizens. Before this time, admission to the public swimming pool was restricted by race. Only whites were allowed full access to the pool on Wednesdays through Sundays. On one day of the week, Mondays, only blacks were allowed into the pool. On Tuesday, the pool was cleaned prior to the next five day cycle of white patrons. Mr. Slater related that the mayor presiding at the time of the desegregation ruling said in private that the black community could have used the swimming pool at any time but no one had put pressure on him to make such an announcement (Mason, 1989). Stories such as this one were juxtaposed on the video against the claim of a smooth desegregation in such a way as to hint of a noble endeavor on the part of the school board to swiftly institute desegregation. 

    These and other historical examples of racism and discrimination indicate a white citizenry that one may have expected to aggressively resist desegregation, yet they did not. On one hand, the official knowledge presented by the video seems to be that blacks were treated fairly in St. Joseph: the school board was more than willing to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling, desegregation was effected immediately, and black teachers retained their positions. This message is, however, sandwiched around the anecdotal evidence that blacks had at one time been lynched and burned and were routinely denied full access to restaurants, hotels, and swimming pools. Then why was desegregation so easily embraced by both blacks and whites as indicated by the video? It is difficult to answer this question using only the video as a source document since it reveals suspicious contradictions and ambiguities but is silent regarding any of the struggles faced by the black community because of desegregation. The account related by the video is interesting in that it depicts a border region in which overt acts of racism occurred daily. Yet at the very crossing of the border, at what might be called the point of entry, all is seemingly peaceful and quiet. The dialogue is rich and full of accounts of racism yet strangely flat and silent about desegregation. Such silencing has a purpose: it is often used to hide something. And perhaps all it was hiding from a white perspective were ambiguities and confusion regarding issues of race. In actuality, a study of the history of Missouri and of the surrounding region revealed a similar pattern of mixed responses to issues of race. As a slave border state aligned with the Union, even Missouri’s slave history is replete with contradictions as demonstrated by a review of the literature related to slavery. 
 

    A review of the literature related to slavery in Missouri produced differing accounts regarding Missouri’s commitment to slavery. Bogle (1991) pointed out how Missourians have always presented a confused attitude regarding race relations. Bogle quoted Hunter (1980) on how Missouri’s history "displayed its confusion, indifference, guilt, cruelty, pride, subterfuge, embarrassment, benevolence, and sympathy in handling the issue of how blacks should and would be treated" (p. 423). Such mixed responses are not surprising considering Missouri’s geographical placement as a border state. Prior to the Civil War, Missouri was positioned as a border state, not only between the North and the South but also between the East and the West. 

    Although Missouri was a slave state, it was Bogle’s (1991) position that the state did not closely identify with the deep South. Most slave owners had only a few slaves and often developed a closer relationship with them than was common in the South (Fleming, 1995). Indeed, Trexler (1914) reported that most slave owners in Missouri owned a husband and wife pair. The wife worked in the house as a cook and maid and the husband most often worked as a field hand alongside the owner and his sons. Strickland (1971), on the other hand, presented a different picture. 

    Strickland (1971) noted that "Missourians were strongly committed to the peculiar institution in 1821" (p. 505) and he was baffled by the fact that he could not clearly identify the reasons for a strong commitment to slavery. Nonetheless, the commitment was there and was acted out with a severity equal to that of the southern states. For instance, Missouri, while still a territory in 1804, enacted a set of slave laws as a "black code" patterned after the slave code of Virginia (Stikland, 1971; Green, Kremer, & Holland, 1993). Strikland (1971) pointed out that racial slavery was assumed within these black codes. That is, since nowhere in the code was a Negro defined; it was assumed that any reference to a slave meant a person of African descent. Section twenty-seven was especially pernicious in that it held that "Negro and mulatto slaves were placed on the level of cattle, horses and other personal property" (Strickland, 1971, p. 508). In addition, the Missouri slave code prohibited slaves from marrying (Greene, Kremer, & Holland, 1993). It is not surprising that a Virginia slave code was adopted since a band of rural farmland, including St. Joseph, was know as Little Dixie. (Boder, 1954) 

    Contrary to Bogle’s (1991) report that Missourians as a whole did not identify strongly with the South, Boder (1954) wrote of a twenty county area of Missouri known as Little Dixie. Little Dixie was settled roughly six years after the Louisiana Purchase by "persons who originated in the slave states further east, principally Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas" (p. 2). In fact, Greene, Kremer, and Holland (1993) found that most Missourians born outside of the state came from these southern states. The Official Manual of the State of Missouri (1973) suggested the settlers were moving away from the worn out soils of the east. Boder also wrote that the twenty counties of Missouri were chosen for their fertile soil and space for "large scale farms and plantations where slave labor could be used" (p. 2). Boder’s research into the history of Little Dixie led him to write, "It seems that in defining Little Dixie most Missourians who have written or spoken on the subject have a certain type of slave-owning aristocratic and country gentry type of culture in mind, mainly the culture of old tidewater Virginia" (p. 2). Indeed, St. Joseph was in many ways in the thick of southern sympathies and accompanying violent racist activities. For example, one notorious instance which demonstrated southern support involved the tearing down of a Union flag. While a representative of the federal government was visiting town, a former mayor climbed the post office flag pole and tore down the flag that the postmaster had raised. That former mayor later became a highly visible Confederate general known as the Swamp Fox, one of the sixteen hundred to two thousand men who entered the Confederate army from St. Joseph’s Buchanan County (History of Buchanan County, 1881). Dickson (1978), writing about this same episode, noted that Southern sympathizers were "in the majority" (p. 7) in St. Joseph. One only has to travel the back roads around St. Joseph or even keep a sharp eye out on the interstate in order to see many of the old mansions of Little Dixie still standing. Many old farm mansions which were perfectly patterned after southern plantation mansions are still standing and still inhabited, gracing the tops of hills in the regions surrounding St. Joseph. I can clearly remember my father once took me to an abandoned old mansion of this type and showed me slave rings in the walls of the basement. I recall that I did not want to see them and I wanted to get out of there. The stark evidence of those rings and chains testified to me that slavery in this region was not a casual enterprise and that such practices were surely embedded within the overall psyche of the inhabitants of St. Joseph. As late as three years after Brown, city fathers were openly identifying the culture of the city with that of the south. In a 1957 letter of welcome to the Missouri Association of High Twelve Clubs, the mayor represented St. Joseph as, "the place where western democracy mingles with southern hospitality in the true spirit of the real America" (Dale, 1957). 

    Indeed, immediately prior to the Civil War, slave ownership was on the rise in Missouri. Neuhoff (no date) observed that the region containing St. Joseph became the most pro-slavery part of Missouri. The reason for this was that hemp was recognized as being especially well suited for the rich soil of Missouri thus, there was need of slave labor to operate the hand break for cleaning the hemp. As opposed to the life of the farmhand slave, the commercially bound slaves were reported to have worked longer hours and to have suffered more like plantation slaves in the deep South (Strickland, 1971). Surely this kind of treatment of slaves did much to inform many residents of St. Joseph as to the worth and dignity which should be assigned to anyone of African descent. However, the history of the county, written in 1881, states that some slaves were paid one dollar for each 100 pounds of hemp they broke and that some were even allowed small plots of land on which to grow their own hemp for processing and sale. I am sure no group of people can be represented in a monolithic way; there were most certainly instances of severe cruelty and also examples of less harsh treatment of slaves. For instance, the history of the county (History of Buchanan County Missouri, 1881) recorded a baby contest in the 1873 St. Joseph Exposition in which one of the fifty-seven infants was "one colored specimen, of the female sex" (p. 299). Such ambiguities of exclusion and partial inclusion also inform the general psyche regarding issues of race. An in-depth treatment of slave life in Missouri is outside the scope of my thesis but may be more completely examined by referring to the writings of others (Greene, Kremer, & Holland, 1993; Foley, 1989; Strickland, 1971; Trexler, 1914). So, we find a mix of attitudes and sympathies about race in the St. Joseph region including some degree of identification with southern culture, including those aspects of prejudice and racism. 

    Cook (1996) offered additional support for the position that Missouri’s citizens, as members of a border state, are unclear about where they stand on issues of race. He wrote, 

    Fleming (1995) stated that "despite its status as a slave-owning state, Missouri made a surprisingly strong commitment to the education of African American children in the years following the Civil War" (p. 1). This is especially noteworthy since, as commented on by Fleming, from 1847 to 1865, it was against state law to educate blacks in Missouri. Specifically, it was the establishment of a post Civil War state constitution in 1865 that allowed for free public schools for all persons between ages five and 21, regardless of color (Greene, Kremer, & Holland, 1993). In fact, the new constitution required the establishment of a black school in a community in which there was more than 20 African-American children. However, Fleming further showed that some communities evaded the requirement of establishing black schools by failing to take an accurate count of blacks or failing to provide needed funds. An 1868 amendment to the state constitution authorized the state superintendent to step in and override community concerns to ensure adequate schooling for African-American children by lowering the number needed for the establishment of a black school to 15 if a district was less than cooperative. Fleming also quoted the Missouri Superintendent of Education as having included in his 1870 report that "Missouri has a larger proportion of schools for Negro children than any other former slave state" (p. 4). 

    Greene, Kremer, and Holland (1993) strongly disagreed with Fleming’s portrait of a Missouri committed to the education of black children. They reported that "nowhere was discrimination more firmly entrenched than in education" (p. 146). Their research found that, in general, black educators were compensated at a rate 25 per cent less than white teachers and that black school buildings were sadly inadequate. Indeed, one historian’s report noted the disparity in funding and facilities for black schools. She pointed to an 1869 speech to the state teacher’s association in which it was mentioned that the school for colored children in St. Joseph was a white frame building while all of the city’s schools for white children were brick (Fleming, 1995). 

    Other legislation regarding the education of blacks in Missouri revealed more evidence of a mixed set of attitudes and actions regarding racial issues. For instance, the state was supportive of and even enforced education for black children. However, such support and boastful claims of tolerance and inclusion were offset by legislation in 1875, predating Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in which separate but equal facilities and services were ruled acceptable. Legislation in 1889 was quoted by Fleming (1995) to have declared it was "unlawful in the public schools of this state for any colored child to attend a white school or any white child to attend a colored school" (p. 5). The public school system which would quickly accommodate black children was formed in 1860 when the population of St. Joseph was around 3,000. 
 

    One historian of St. Joseph addressed the founding of the first public school in the city by relating how a group of concerned citizens obtained a state charter to "educate all free white persons in the city" (Van Horn, 1990). Two board members were elected from each of the three city wards to form the new school board. The first school board records begin on February 7, 1860 with the recording of the newly elected school board and led by Superintendent George H. Hall (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, Book I, February, 1860). The first official act of the new board was the authorization of three schools. All three schools were built from the same plans, being brick buildings two stories high and 34 feet by 25 feet. Each building was essentially one room atop another with each having the capacity to hold 50 to 60 students. Each of the three elementary schools was staffed by a male principal with women assistants. The high school, which was the second public high school to open in Missouri, opened in March of 1861. The Civil War caused all the schools to be closed in 1861. The elementary schools closed on May 23 of 1861 and the high school was allowed to finish its term in June. None of the public schools reopened until August of 1864. On August 12, 1864, the first school board superintendent was elected at a salary of $1,000 per year (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, August 12, 1864). At the August 18 meeting of the school board, the superintendent presented a set of five resolutions which outlined the organization of the district schools (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, August 18, 1864). On September 27 the school board authorized a newspaper advertisement to the effect that the schools would be opened on October 3 (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, September, 1864). Although the district continued to grow and expand, I was specifically interested in the formation of the schools for black children. 

    The first mention of public schooling for black children is in the School Board Minutes of June 30, 1865. The minutes read, "Messrs. Whiting, Nash, and the Superintendent were appointed to a Council to consider the practicability of opening a school for colored children" (St. Joseph School Board Minutes, June 30, 1865). The wording of this entry is intriguing since it implies that the district had a choice in the matter of opening a school for African American children. The truth of the matter was that Missouri Charter of 1865 mandated the creation of schools for black children. The board formalized a decision that provided for the education of black children at the September 25, 1865 meeting. The November 13, 1865 minutes of the school board include the following: 

    The Colored High School was opened during the 1890-91 school year, using two of the ten rooms with a colored elementary school occupying the other eight rooms. School board minutes noted that the cost of educating 40-50 colored high school students almost equaled the cost of educating 200 white children. In addition to the added expense, at least one board member held the opinion that the black community was not supportive of education. The board agreed, at least enough to have authorized the following for inclusion in their 1897-1898 board minutes: 

    School board minutes also revealed that the black community appealed to the school board in 1869 for help in providing adequate facilities for educating their children. The minutes of December 7 stated that the spokesman for a committee of concerned black parents brought a resolution to the effect that "the board had not provided sufficient school accommodations for the colored children in the city." The committee also requested that the school board look into their claims that one of the black instructors "had used improper instruments and modes of punishment and had punished her scholars cruelly and with unnecessary severity." The board instructed the superintendent to look into the matters and report back to the board at their next meeting. The next two regularly scheduled board meetings did not get underway due to the lack of a quorum. When the board finally did meet on April 3, 1870, the superintendent reported that he had investigated the charges leveled against the teacher and found them "unsupported by facts." No mention was made of the charges of inadequate accommodations. This was the same year in which Richard B. Foster, a contributor to the founding of Lincoln Institute, used St. Joseph as an example in a speech to the state teacher’s association. He called attention to the fact that school buildings for whites in St. Joseph were made of brick while colored schools were frame (Fleming, 1995). One might ask who truly lacked the genuine interest in the education of these children? 

    A similar incident was reported in the school board minutes on June 18, 1874. Once again, parents of one of the colored schools asked that the board investigate and charge one of the black male teachers with "brutality in the punishment of pupils and with treating the parents in an unbecoming manner." Witnesses were examined on the spot and the charge was dismissed by the board. 

    In another notation in the board minutes of August of 1875, one board member reported to the entire board that "he saw no reason why any change or increase should be made in Colored School buildings save some improvements such as grading, guttering, and painting and that some of the rooms needed new benches." I found very few references in the school board minutes having anything to do with the black schools. Perhaps the black parents of 1898 did not seem to the board members to have a genuine interest in the education of their children because the black community had tired of supporting a system which was unresponsive to their needs and requests. 

    This criticism that black families did not have a genuine interest in education as evidenced by lower enrollment was addressed in the official report entitled The Report of the Principal of the Colored High School to the Superintendent of Schools, included in the Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1898-99. In this report, the principal requested additional curriculum which might be more appropriate to the level of jobs available after graduation to young black men and women. The report in its entirety is included in the appendices but a portion is offered here: 

    By 1909 the colored high school had graduated 21 classes of 44 boys and 111 girls. The vocational emphasis continued until the school closed due to desegregation. Black teachers focused on basics and ensured that their students could read and perform basic math in the three black elementary schools and the one black high school which still shared a building with one of the elementary schools. 

    If Nathaniel Bruce is any indication of the qualifications of St. Joseph black educators, then they were at least as, if not more, qualified than their white counterparts. Huber and Kemer (1991) wrote of how Bruce attended the Shaw Normal and Industrial High School in Raleigh, North Carolina; received a bachelor of arts degree with honors from Shaw University; attended both Bates College and Harvard; and subsequently attended Hampton and Tuskegee. At Tuskegee, Bruce studied under Booker T. Washington. However, it was very difficult to find qualified black teachers in Missouri following the Civil War until the newly established Lincoln Institute graduated teachers (Greene, Kremer, & Holland, 1993). None of the school records elaborated any on the educational background of black teachers so this information was sought through interviewing. 
 

    While desegregation offered hope for greater access to the American dream for black school children, it offered the equal threat of the end of the professional careers of black teachers. In one set of counties researched by Greene, Kremer, and Holland (1993) 125 to 150 black educators lost their jobs. To their credit, one of the first things the St. Joseph School Board did in planning for desegregation was to assure black teachers that they would be retained. For instance, in the May 19 newspaper account the Vice-President of the school board stated, "I see no great upsets at all . . . regarding Negro students and teachers in the schools" ("School Issue to be Solved," 1954). However, contrary to the claims made in the video, interviews with former teachers and students revealed that teachers were not retained in the manner indicated. Since the district kept all three black school buildings functioning for another year and since they retained the black teachers at those sites, the district had one year in which to allow attrition to remove some retiring black teachers. Some elementary teachers were kept in the same neighborhoods as the segregated black schools. Therefore, they continued to teach but in classrooms with few white students or in positions of lesser status. For some of the black teachers, reassignment was a reduction in work load. For instance, Mrs. Holmes, the principal of one of the three black elementary schools, was listed in the 1954-1955 personnel directory for the school district as being responsible for teacher grades 4-6, in addition to her responsibilities as principal. No white elementary principals were listed as having extra duties or teaching assignments except for the Eugene Field Elementary principal, who also taught music. All of the black elementary teachers at Douglass and Lincoln taught more than one grade level. Less than 10 per cent of the nearly 300 white elementary teachers taught more than one grade level and of these, all but music and art teachers only taught two grades. These teachers not only worked hard, interviewees consistently reported how effective they were with teaching the basics. 

    That is the context leading up to the implementation of desegregation. The historical context following 1954 reveals a continuation of racism in St. Joseph. 
 

    A sampling of St. Joseph newspaper articles and editorials from Brown to the present suggested a number of recurring themes which helped guide the interviewing portion of my study. The themes were: (a) accommodations, (b) jobs, (c) hegemony, and (d) racist acts. Each of these themes demonstrates a continuation of racism through the period of 1953 to 1959 and beyond. Discrimination in public accommodations continued but to a lesser degree for desegregation did have a dramatic effect in increasing the access of blacks to public places. Jobs once again became scarce for blacks as the packing house industry died out and it became less popular to hire black domestics. Blacks continued to report racism in the form of subtle acts of surveillance and lowered expectations. All in all, as my research will clearly show later, desegregation stigmatized overt racism and drove it underground but it continued to operate beyond 1954. 

     On September 4, 1963, the Fair Accommodations Ordinance passed in the city council with a vote of five to four (Erickson, 1963). This ordinance prohibited discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants and places of entertainment because of race, color, or creed. One of the councilmen who voted in favor of the ordinance and who was quoted in the St. Joseph newspaper addressed blacks with the following: 

    Speaking strongly in favor of the ordinance were a Christian minister, a Catholic priest, and a prominent Jewish businessman. The minister appealed for passage with these words: 

    The concern for jobs raised by the principal of the Colored High School in the annual report of 1900 is one that has never been entirely answered. For instance, Greene, Kremer, and Holland (1993) reported that the findings of the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1963 concerning Mexico, Missouri could have equally applied to the county in which St. Joseph is situated: 

    A twenty-seven year old black woman responded to a 1994 newspaper interview in the St. Joseph newspaper regarding job prospects: "I think things are getting worse. The unemployment office don’t give you nothing but the runaround. My brother has been going since high school and can’t find a job." (Weston, 1994). Another respondent, a black woman in her 40s stated, "Why they sell drugs is they need money and can’t find no jobs. We’re all trying to stretch the dollar. There’s people who used to work at Monfort and Sherwood who are now stealing." (Weston, 1994). A black student in the same article stated that he saw racism "in the lack of opportunities here for young blacks after they finish school" (Weston, 1994). He echoed the opinion of many others, that young blacks need to leave town in order to find a good job. And if they stay in St. Joseph, they will most likely be subjected to a subtle form of racism that some blacks have described as pervasive. 

    One theme that runs through many newspaper interviews with black citizens about racism revolves around the word subtle. For instance, respondents in 1989, 1994, and 1998 all referred to the way in which St. Joseph racism is "a subtle, yet pervasive discrimination" (Janulewicz, 1989) which exists between blacks and whites. High school students usually gave accounts of surveillance, of being followed by store workers and security. In 1994, in an interview in the local newspaper, one of the interviewees for this study expressed embarrassment at being a black professional yet experiencing security codes being announced and having off-duty police follow him around stores as if he were a shoplifter. As a part of that same interview, a sixteen year old black student remarked that "racism, although more subtle now, is just as vexing" (Weston, 1994) as when his parents were younger. Older blacks related stories of how they felt pressured not to seek homes in some neighborhoods. Although in the 1989 series of articles related to racism, blacks interviewed said that segregation, discrimination, and stereotyping continued to exist in St. Joseph, some black leaders felt the answer lay in them getting their act together. One black minister was quoted as having said, 

    One effect of this pervasive force of racism is lowered aspirations (MacLeod, 1987). As an example, one black professional said of the effect on her children, 

    When minority students in 1998 were asked if racism existed, they responded as if the question were foolish. However, students said that trying to identify racism was like trying to listen to a radio program from a distant station: examples of racism contain static that make it hard to sort out what was racist and what was something else. Again, students used the word "subtle" to describe the dynamics of racism in St. Joseph. They gave examples of school punishments going beyond the crime and of school administrators who seem unresponsive. Many told of being counseled by teachers and school counselors to set their sights lower than those to which they had aspired. One sophomore said, "It (racism) is always present in the atmosphere" (Borsi, 1998). She related that one of the ways in which racism was manifested was the way in which black students seemed to be quickly categorized as to whether they were good or bad students. An in-school suspension teacher at Central High school collaborated this and noted that there are few minority students in honors classes because they were not given the same opportunities for admittance (Borsi, 1998). Although such subtle racist activities and behaviors are experienced by St. Joseph blacks as pervasive, there are occasional explicit acts of violence in the city and the surrounding area. 
 
 

Various blatant acts of racism are recorded in the St. Joseph newspaper from time to time. One of the more recent occurred when a black worker at a local manufacturing plant was the target of harassment when he began to date a white woman. He stated that he experienced the word "nigger" often "spoken, written and carved into woodwork at his workplace, where he also has seen desecrated images of black people accompanied by the slogan, ‘kill them all’" (Wittenauer, 1998). He was given three weeks off work and advised to seek counseling from a minister recommended by the company. He did not find satisfaction there, however, since the minister spent most of their counseling time concerned about the mixed-race relationship. Of more relevance to the St. Joseph school system was a report in the newspaper of how a black prospective school board member was addressed by the board. 

The May 15 St. Joseph newspaper editorial in 1997 addressed an incident that occurred a couple of weeks earlier when a potential new board member was being questioned by the board. One of the current board members asked the black candidate if he thought St. Joseph was "ready to accept someone of a different skin color" ("This Question Backfired," 1997). This is interesting in that the City Council has had black members for some time but the school board has always been exclusively white. The candidate, a very well respected education professional from an equally well-respected family, answered the question with grace and dignity, replying that he hoped his contributions would overcome any minor problems with skin color. Thus, from before desegregation and continuing beyond the target dates of my study, 1953 through 1959, racism has been reported to be both present and active in St. Joseph. My final section in the chapter will summarize the archival research addressed above and draw some tentative conclusions. 
 

In summary, the historical terrain that surrounds the St. Joseph desegregation of schools from 1953 to 1959 is inconsistent with the official account as presented by the school district video tape and newspaper articles. The official account implied a white populace anxiously awaiting the first opportunity to integrate schools and broaden access to public facilities to include the black citizenry. For example, Mr. Slater said in the video tape that the public swimming pools would have been open to blacks at any time if they had ever asked, implying a willingness on the part of whites and that some kind of social deficiency on the part of the blacks was at fault. This kind of paternalistic message was amplified in the newspaper quote of the city councilman who asked the black community to behave well and make the whites proud of them. Such hierarchical language is contradictory to the dominant message of the desegregation video, that the white community was more than willing to end segregation and embrace integration. Even the very recent incident in which a black school board candidate was asked if he thought the community was ready for a black school board member demonstrates a continuum of racism that began before 1953 and has continued beyond 1959, the year in which the district was mostly desegregated. Although my research will show that the swift agreement to desegregate on the part of the white school board was itself a strategy to retain power, my study will also show how desegregation opened up democratic spaces that were earlier unavailable to black students. However, prior to presenting the voices of my interviewees in chapter four and offering my analysis in chapter five, I will share the details of my methodology in the next chapter.