Author: William H. Freivogel

Clarence Thomas ‘documentary’ was no documentary

Clarence Thomas is not evil as many of his critics say nor the hero his backers worship.  He’s not the legal incompetent his detractors ridicule. Nor is he the legal visionary many conservatives describe. He’s not the Uncle Tom of racist caricatures drawn by some liberal cartoonists. But his vision of equality couldn’t be more

The 1857 Project: Extracting the poison of racism from America’s soul

The spring 2020 print issue on the history of slavery, segregation, and racism in our region was produced with the help and financial support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The soul of America is its promise of ever-expanding freedom, equality and opportunity. The parodox of America is that over four centuries our Founders

Press flubs first draft of history of race

The press’  rough draft of the history of race in St. Louis, Missouri and Illinois got most things wrong. In the early 1950s, a group of young civil rights activists – Irv and Maggie Dagen, Charles and Marion Oldham and Norman Seay – led a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) sponsored sit-in of lunch counters

The Land of Dred Scott: Scenes from our racist history

The nation’s fight about the meaning of America’s great promises of freedom and equality played out at St. Louis’ Old Courthouse in 1850 and before huge crowds in the seven Illinois towns during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. It took the death of 750,000 men to settle the issue. Five paragraphs beyond those stirring words