Mo-Hon-Go (Sacred Sun), an Osage woman, and her child. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Image Collection, 021180]

The most powerful tribal group in the early history of Missouri was referred to as the Wah-…

Ivory Perry addressing a crowd at a civil rights demonstration in front of St. Louis police headquarters on September 16, 1965. Photograph by Buel White, © St. Louis Post-Dispatch. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Collection, N22497]

A community organizer, civil rights campaigner, housing specialist, and antipoverty…

Homer G. Phillips. Painting by Vernon Smith. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Objects Collection, 2016-058-0001]

Homer G. Phillips was born in Sedalia, Missouri, on April 1, 1880. He was raised by an aunt…

An early twentieth-century postcard of Stewart Bridge, where a mob killed James T. Scott in the early hours of April 29, 1923. [State Historical Society of Missouri, John W. Coffman Collection of University of Missouri Postcards (P305), 010783-1]

James T. Scott (1885?–1923) was the victim of one of the most…

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An unheralded Afro-Indian slave woman’s dreams of freedom propelled one of the most…

Charlton H. Tandy. [State Historical Society of Missouri, St. Louis Research Center, Black History Photograph Collection (S0336)]

Charlton H. Tandy, an outspoken leader of the nineteenth-century Black civil rights…

James Milton Turner, circa 1870. [Lincoln University]

Although numerous secondary accounts of James Milton Turner’s life list his birth date as…

Roy Wilkins in 1963. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-01273]

Roy O. Wilkins was born on August 30, 1901, in St. Louis. Five years earlier, the US…

Arsania Williams. [State Historical Society of Missouri St. Louis Research Center, University of Missouri Saint Louis Black History Project Photograph Collection (S0201)]

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, around 1875—sources differ on the year of her birth—Arsania…

Prison photographs of Cleo Wright. [Courtesy of Missouri State Archives]

Born in Jefferson County, Arkansas, on June 16, 1916, Ricelor Cleodas Watson was the son of…