Ironically , the same 3,000 acres of land at the confluence of the Missouri & Mississippi Rivers, in St. Charles County, Missouri, at issue here, was formerly bequeathed to the black descendants of a white father who had married a black woman, before the Civil War. The Missouri Supreme Court disallowed the testamentary bequest in the white father's will, because it was illegal, under state law, which forbade bequests to black children by their white fathers. So, their valuable landed legacy was lost! I learned of this travesty in the 1980s, when I was a volunteer attorney helping such persons for the Emergency Land Fund (ELF), based in Atlanta, while employed as an Assistant U. S. Attorney in Kansas City, Missouri. An heir of this black family had sought me out through ELF. I cannot pull up the case presently, but when I printed it off back in the 1980s, for him, the heir wept openly that an unsettling family rumor had at last been confirmed, as true, if sad.
Instead, an article by a former Missouri Supreme Court justice in 2007 that gives a flavor for the state's antebellum legal context is also annexed.
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/messenger-busch-scion-issues-warning-over-flood-plain-development/article_8f0b82d9-bc69-5bcf-adc3-144aeeff2352.html?mobile_touch=true
https://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=8827
Monday, February 15, 2016
MISSOURI MISSISSIPPI RIVER CONFLUENCE AND RACE
Ironically , the same 3,000 acres of land at the confluence of the Missouri & Mississippi Rivers, in St. Charles County, Missouri, at issue here, was formerly bequeathed to the black descendants of a white father who had married a black woman, before the Civil War. The Missouri Supreme Court disallowed the testamentary bequest in the white father's will, because it was illegal, under state law, which forbade bequests to black children by their white fathers. So, their valuable landed legacy was lost! I learned of this travesty in the 1980s, when I was a volunteer attorney helping such persons for the Emergency Land Fund (ELF), based in Atlanta, while employed as an Assistant U. S. Attorney in Kansas City, Missouri. An heir of this black family had sought me out through ELF. I cannot pull up the case presently, but when I printed it off back in the 1980s, for him, the heir wept openly that an unsettling family rumor had at last been confirmed, as true, if sad.
Instead, an article by a former Missouri Supreme Court justice in 2007 that gives a flavor for the state's antebellum legal context is also annexed.
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/messenger-busch-scion-issues-warning-over-flood-plain-development/article_8f0b82d9-bc69-5bcf-adc3-144aeeff2352.html?mobile_touch=true
https://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=8827