Jonesboro, Illinois, Sept. 15 While I doubt it was the late fall heat keeping people away completely, the crowd in this town deep in Southern Illinois’ “Egypt” region with its great rivers is smaller than either of the two previous debates. Reliably there are somewhere near 1,400 people present on this hot afternoon. I suspect…
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…
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 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…
It’s been hard in recent weeks to deliver my usual pep talk about journalism to the college students whom I teach. For one, we are not in the same physical space. I’m engaging with students online in bursts and have been since late March. Even so, I can sense their grief, sometimes in their silence…