Protesting apartheid at Washington University — in 1978. It was a different time. Many demonstrations, no arrests. FBI Director William Webster, a university trustee, was keynote speaker at the Founders’ Day celebration that year. His speech dealt with accountability: “No institution has the right to claim it is not answerable to the people,” he told attendees.
Continue reading “Flashback”Author: rwklose
‘Always crashing in the same car’
‘Memorial to St. Louis abandoned’
The “Twain” sculpture by Richard Serra, located in downtown St. Louis, garnered an excessive amount of media attention in the early 1980s. This was due, in part, to its expense and because it was promoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch while simultaneously being criticized by the declining St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
In September 1985, novelist and professor William Gass took another look at Serra and his legacy in an essay for the St. Louis Journalism Review.*
Gass, taking note of the fact that much of St. Louis was in decline, wrote:
Continue reading “‘Memorial to St. Louis abandoned’”‘The real source of corruption’
“It is useless to simply change the men in office. It is the system itself, the real source of corruption, that must be changed.” — Dr. William Preston Hill, a St. Louis physician, reformer and leader of the Referendum League, which championed the Initiative and Referendum Constitutional Amendment, approved by Missouri voters in 1908.
Here is a partial timeline of the “initiative and referendum” constitutional amendment, approved by Missouri voters in 1908:
Continue reading “‘The real source of corruption’”‘Almost fantastic’
Well before the post-war exodus, St. Louis planners were sounding the alarm about the rapid development of St. Louis County while the city was stagnating.
Continue reading “‘Almost fantastic’”Moonstruck
Newspapers across the country noted the death in 1910 of Henry Ziegenhein, a former St. Louis mayor who became famous a decade earlier for a flippant remark about the street lighting situation in the city.
“We got a moon yet, ain’t it?” is what old “Uncle Henry” supposedly said, a quip that was widely repeated, and immortalized by Lincoln Steffens, who used it in “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” the famous expose on St. Louis published by McClure’s in 1902.
The line, in fact, has been repeated over and over — including by the Post-Dispatch — whenever there’s talk about the provincialism and corruption of what was once the nation’s fourth-largest city.
But a review of the archives suggests the quote is an invention of the Post-Dispatch. Or at least the product of creative license.
Continue reading “Moonstruck”Cat boxing, floaters, Pruitt-Igoe, UFOs, dumb cops, Hitler sightings and other miscellania
BOXING CATS: 75 years ago, the featured act at Club Boulevard on North Grand was Eddie Fay and his boxing cats. The Post-Dispatch memorialized the act in a full-page spread on May 2, 1948; two days later, the Star-Times had a Humane Society rep warning Fay “against using rough treatment on the cats.” Fay had been promoting the boxing cats since at least 1941; he was still doing his cat act in 1963 when he appeared on Charlotte Peters’ show on KSD-TV. Archie D. “Eddie” Fay died in 1965. He was 73.
Watch the video:
Continue reading “Cat boxing, floaters, Pruitt-Igoe, UFOs, dumb cops, Hitler sightings and other miscellania “The Republican’s ‘joke’
The currently popular origin story of the Order of the Veiled Prophet describes the organization as a reaction by the St. Louis establishment to the labor turmoil of 1877. The Veiled Prophet was racist, elitist, secretive and maybe even violent.
Exhibit A has been an illustration of the very first Veiled Prophet, published by the St. Louis Republican on Oct. 6, 1878, two days before the organization’s first-ever parade.
Continue reading “The Republican’s ‘joke’”‘Battle of Virden’
Madness, dissipation, despair
The tragic stories of otherwise obscure St. Louisans filled the pages of the Post-Dispatch in the late 19th century, a sideshow of freaks and curiosities that showed how brutish and uncertain life could be during the first Gilded Age.
Here are three women whose tales of woe were highlighted 125 years ago:
Continue reading “Madness, dissipation, despair”From the ‘scrapbooks’ of JPII
In 1922, Joseph Pulitzer II, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, asked his business manager A.G. Lincoln to approach E. Lansing Ray, publisher of the morning St. Louis Globe-Democrat, with a confidential proposition: agree to cut the number of comic pages to four in both Sunday papers.
Continue reading “From the ‘scrapbooks’ of JPII”‘The glorious Fourth’
An editorial cartoon by Paul Frederick Berdanier, published July 4, 1913 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Berdanier worked as an illustrator for the Post-Dispatch from 1902 until 1918. While in St. Louis, he did several covers for The Mirror, William Marion Reedy’s acclaimed literary journal. The St. Louis Public Library has an online collection of some of Berdanier’s work here: https://rb.gy/s8j6k
‘Purely a human contrivance’
On Feb. 7, 1867, amid heavy snow and frigid temperatures, Frederick Douglass came to St. Louis to denounce President Andrew Johnson for his policy of leniency toward the white insurrectionists of the South. His speech, also delivered elsewhere, was titled “Sources of Danger to the Republic.”
Douglass spoke at Turner’s Hall — the Turnhalle — on 16-18 S. Tenth Street, between Market and Walnut streets. The hall was built by German immigrants, staunch Unionists who fought Missouri state government’s effort to join the Confederacy. (The building, nicknamed the “Cradle of Liberty,” was razed in 1932.)
In his speech, which resonates today, Douglass described the imperfections of the U.S. Constitution, which he called “a human contrivance,” and offered recommendations for improvement, including universal suffrage: “Keep no man from the ballot box or jury box or the cartridge box, because of his color — exclude no woman from the ballot box because of her sex.”
Continue reading “‘Purely a human contrivance’”‘There was great rejoicing in hell this morning’
Remembering George Dinning, a Black farmer in the South who courageously defended his family from a white mob, then sued — and won. (First published on May 5, 2018)
FRANKLIN, Ky. — Late on the night of Jan. 21, 1897, a group of 25 armed white men showed up at the home of George and Mary Dinning and told the family they had 10 days to leave.* They accused George Dinning, a former slave, of stealing chickens and hogs.
Dinning insisted he was no thief, but these Night Riders weren’t listening. They shot into the house — most of the couple’s 12 terrified children were there — and hit Dinning in the arm and grazed his forehead.
Despite his wounds, Dinning returned fire, killing a 32-year-old man named Jodie Conn. After the whites fled, Dinning made his way to nearby Franklin — the county seat of Simpson County, Ky. — where he turned himself in to the sheriff.
The vigilantes, as Dinning had feared, returned to his home and on a bitterly cold night forced his wife and children to leave. They then plundered the
Continue reading “‘There was great rejoicing in hell this morning’”White riot, 1920
The East St. Louis Massacre of 1917, a series of riots triggered by white labor’s reaction to the employment of Black workers as strikebreakers, left dozens, if not hundreds, of Black residents dead and thousands homeless. But workplace-related racist violence continued in the region for years, albeit on a smaller scale.
On Friday, Aug. 13, 1920, the owners of a coal mine in Coulterville, Illinois, faced with a shortage of white workers, decided to make a Black worker, William Morrison, work in a pit hitherto reserved largely for whites. But the white miners refused to work with Morrison. And they again refused on Saturday, Aug. 14.
Continue reading “White riot, 1920”The Missouri editor whose bigotry outlived him
John W. Jacks was in his time an esteemed newspaperman, a native Missourian who started, owned and edited several publications before buying the Montgomery Standard in 1881 and editing the weekly for some 40 years. He was politically active, accepted state and federal appointments, ran for office and used his position and his paper to advance his interests. “One of the ablest newspapermen in Missouri” is how he was described in news stories about his death published across the state.
None of those reports, however, cited Jacks’ most notorious contribution to Missouri journalism, when, as president of the Missouri Press Association, he responded to British anti-lynching activist Florence Balgarnie’s solicitation of support by sending a racist broadside.
Continue reading “The Missouri editor whose bigotry outlived him”‘He studied nothing, but knew something about everything.’
In January 1903, Rep. John T. Crisp of Independence proposed a “Jim Crow” law for Missouri, requiring Black and white passengers to ride in separate railway coaches. “Col. Crisp’s bill is taken seriously by his fellow members at Jefferson City. It is necessary to say this for the reason that Col. Crisp’s colleagues do not always take him seriously,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The “portly orator” did, in fact, introduce such a bill, but he was beat to the punch by Rep. Lon B. Williams of Scott County, a fellow Democrat who hoped to ride Jim Crow racism straight to the lieutenant governor’s seat. The two bills were combined into one, but after considerable debate and lobbying, the legislation was soundly defeated, 55-70, with all of the House Republicans and a few Democratic leaders opposing the measure.
Vocal opposition from Black Missourians was key — they held meetings and rallies, and showed up in force in the Capitol to lobby lawmakers.
Continue reading “‘He studied nothing, but knew something about everything.’”‘Simply a business proposition’
When Presbyterians decided to sell their church at 910 N. Newstead to Lane Tabernacle, Roy S. Rauschkolb, a 34-year-old Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. salesman, organized a “protective association” to block the sale and keep African Americans from moving into the neighborhood. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 25, 1920)
Rauschkolb said: “This is not a race question, and there is no prejudice in it. It is simply a business proposition. Most of us have worked hard to build or buy our homes, and we don’t propose to see their value depreciated.”
Continue reading “‘Simply a business proposition’”‘No feeling of jubilation manifested’
A Black man was arrested in Sikeston, Missouri, taken across the Mississippi River to Bardwell, Kentucky, lynched, burned and mutilated by a mob looking to avenge the murder of two white girls.
C.J. Miller’s story, retold by journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, was published on July 29, 1894 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Continue reading “‘No feeling of jubilation manifested’”Watermelons and Prophets
Organizers of the Order of the Veiled Prophet in 1878, led by brothers Charles and Alonzo Slayback, sought to lift the city’s profile as a growing, affluent commercial hub. But, early on, the all-white, all-male Veiled Prophet promoted racist tropes, which were unapologetically echoed by all the leading newspapers of St. Louis.
Continue reading “Watermelons and Prophets”Filling in the blanks
Several years ago, as I looked for coverage of a long-ago dairy show (I was helping a friend research a book), I spotted a brief article on page 4 of the Oct. 14, 1909 edition of The Missourian. It was a short report about a new campus organization.
Here’s the lede:
Continue reading “Filling in the blanks”‘The baby burner’
One of the earliest stories about abortion in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch archives was published in 1874 by The Dispatch, one of the newspaper’s predecessors. It involved a midwife-abortionist named Julia Fortmeyer, who lived at 1817 Morgan Street (now Delmar, between 18th and 19th streets).
Fortmeyer’s brush with infamy began in August of that year, when she asked local authorities to retrieve the body of Lena Miller, an African American woman of about 18 years, who died after a crude abortion and after receiving what was described as an overdose of morphine.
Continue reading “‘The baby burner’”‘Land of opportunity’
Somebody was emptying the poor box at the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, so the Rev. Joseph R. Watson rigged the box, wiring it to an electric buzzer that would sound in his study.
On Feb. 3, 1920, the alarm went off, and Father Watson, accompanied by a nearby store clerk, ran into the church and caught a man who said his name was Vaclav Krejci, a 35-year-old immigrant artist. When police officers searched the suspect, they found tools, skeleton keys and three slugs that Father Watson had placed in the box.
Continue reading “‘Land of opportunity’”The dynamite plot
In 1885, streetcar workers in St. Louis went on strike, seeking a 12-hour workday (instead of the usual 16- to 18-hour day), a wage scale of $2 per day for conductors, 20 cents per hour for overtime, and $1.75 for drivers. The streetcar companies responded by hiring replacement workers.
The strikers, backed by the Knights of Labor, responded, in some cases, by dragging the replacements — denounced as “scabs” and “rats” — from the cars and assaulting them. They also tried to disrupt service by rocking cars, stretching carpet across the tracks to frighten the horses, and blowing cars off the tracks.
Continue reading “The dynamite plot”‘Refusing to obey orders’
The Day Book, E.W. Scripps’ Chicago-based ad-free daily, in 1916 reported on an unusual fight between the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and all of St. Louis’ major department stores.
The Post-Dispatch introduced a slick new rotogravure section to showcase its photography, but the department stores balked at the 50 cent per line ad rate, the highest “ever charged in St. Louis for newspaper advertising,” The Day Book reported.
Continue reading “‘Refusing to obey orders’”Jerry the smoking St. Louis orangutan
St. Louis still celebrates some of the long-ago residents of its famous zoo. Phil the gorilla. Mr. Moke the chimp. Moby Dick the sea elephant. Siegfried the walrus.
But not Jerry.
This much-photographed orangutan showed up in newspapers across the nation in the 1940s — and even scored appearances in Life magazine and in at least one newsreel.
Today, though, Jerry seems to have been forgotten.
I became curious about Jerry when I spotted an old postcard that showed him in uniform, smoking a cigarette. I made a few inquiries and checked archives.
Here is what I learned.
Continue reading “Jerry the smoking St. Louis orangutan”‘St. Louis is a slum city’
The wholesale demolition of Mill Creek, the elimination of historic structures along the riverfront and urban renewal share a dark legacy in St. Louis. But long-forgotten is the wretched condition of most of the city’s housing stock immediately after World War II, when one out of every three residences lacked a toilet or bath.
Only five major cities — all in the South — were worse off, the Federal Housing Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau found.
Continue reading “‘St. Louis is a slum city’”Depressingly consistent
In 2015, I wrote about a century-old insurance industry study that examined murder in selected U.S. cities, including St. Louis. The study linked high homicide rates, in large part, to the “unrestrained sale of firearms.” It also found rates tended to be higher in cities with “persons of color.”
Continue reading “Depressingly consistent”Then and now
In 1917, the Missouri General Assembly passed two groundbreaking pieces of legislation.
Lawmakers approved a sweeping gun control measure.
And they abolished capital punishment.
Gov. Frederick Gardner vetoed the gun bill, even though it had been championed by Sam Allender, the highly regarded chief of detectives for the St. Louis Police Department.
Continue reading “Then and now”‘American money’
Adolf Hitler, the Austrian-born Bavarian fascist, made his first appearance in the pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a century ago, about 10 years before he was appointed chancellor of Germany.
It was a brief mention. The newspaper on Dec. 11, 1922, published only the first paragraph of a short Associated Press story, which reported “American money is helping to finance the Fascisti movement in Bavaria led by Herr Hitler.”
Continue reading “‘American money’”