MUSINGS ON MISSOURI

MUSINGS ON MISSOURI ACTIVISTS’ MURDERS As a resident of both “coasts” of Missouri , St. Louis County and Kansas City, who has studied, with interest, Missouri’s black history, I note curiously, the seeming political similarities of murders of preeminent Missouri activists in this black history month. Sticking to the big cities, on the “coasts” without venturing below or above, I cannot but acknowledge similarities between Howard University Law School-educated attorney-activist, Homer G. Phillip’s 1931 murder, in St. Louis City; he had engineered and won a big bond issue at the polls to build a hospital for blacks that others wanted to divert for whites. He won! That hospital famously bears his name. The case of Lincoln University at Jefferson City, Missouri-educated, litigator-activist, Lloyd Gaines’ yet unexplained “disappearance” after winning admission to law school at the University of Missouri in 1939, in a landmark United States Supreme Court decision, is mighty mysterious! Ruefully, I also note the 1970 political murder of legislator, Freedom Inc.-co-founder, Leon Jordan, and the after-hours’ club thug-like murder of social activist , SAC-20 founder, Bernard Powell in 1979. People die everyday. Every one is going to die by some means. The point here is whether there might be a sordid Missouri nexus associated with each of these activist deaths? I do not know. I am content to ask the question in black history 2020!