Brian LevinMissouri Is America Missouri is America nike free 3.0 suomi , and like the nation itself, both racial strife and promise, are part of its enduring legacy. Long before black teenager Michael Brown, died tragically in a hail of police bullets, the dramatic epicenter of America's racial fault lines often emerged in Missouri. For our nation's African-American community in particular, Missouri, has been a state of stark, often heartbreaking contrasts, where bold aspirations had to compete with debilitating painful losses, and occasional federal intervention. Prominent African-American lives with Missouri connections reflect those enduring contrasts of aspiration, and heartbreak: poet Maya Angelou, actress Josephine Baker, scientist George Washington Carver, were all born there, and Dred Scott nike free 5.0 halvalla , a life-long slave, found his final resting place as a free man there as well. Ironically, today, tipsy Missouri is also the population fulcrum of the United States, where the nation would balance perfectly if the weight of each American were equally represented. Following Brown's death, America's clash over unequal representation nationally, has erupted locally in Ferguson, a city 70 percent African-American, where 50 of 53 of the police officers and most elected officials are white. St. Louis County, which excludes its namesake city, like many in America, became an amalgam of autonomous jurisdictions, where race often gerrymandered municipal and neighborhood boundaries. One Man's Struggle For Freedom Racial divides defined the state's founding and early history. The Missouri Compromise, which was later repealed, allowed the state's creation as a slave state nike free 5.0 tr fit 4 , and Maine as a free one. Fugitive slave laws empowered by the Constitution mandated the return of escaped slaves to their masters even if they fled to free states. Nonetheless, in 1846 an illiterate slave named Dred Scott, boldly sued for his freedom in St. Louis courts as some had previously emancipated other slaves. After many lengthy delays, the State Supreme Court as well as a federal court denied his claim that his travels to the free state of Illinois with his master, made him a free man. In 1857 the United States Supreme Court, in Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393, by a 7-2 vote denied Scott's claim as well. The Court ruled that Congress could not regulate slavery under the already repealed Missouri Compromise. Further, they found African-Americans were "inferior" beings who had no rights that the white man was bound to respect, and thus were not entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The children of Scott's initial owner purchased Scott and his family and immediately freed them, nine months prior to his death. Scott's final resting place in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis is a short drive from Ferguson. Beyond The Civil War The decision catapulted the nation into a civil war, with Missouri being nominally a Union state, despite having a slave supporting governor, and few slave owners. Union troops violently battled Missouri militia under the leadership of Confederate sympathizing commanders during the War. Following the Civil War, the 13th and 14th Amendments abolished slavery nike free flyknit sale , and promised citizenship and equal protection for all America's citizens irrespective of race. In response to violent racial attacks by the Klan and others new laws were passed to protect newly freed slaves. Missouri native Mark Twain's controversial use of racial epithets and stereotypes in 1884's fictional novel, The "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," to explore race and other issues in his home and neighboring states, remain a source of both analysis and conflict to this day. In 1931, the lynching of African-American defendant Raymond Gunn, who was burned to death after being accused of killing a white school teacher in Marysville became national news. Thousands gathered to watch and some took souvenirs from the scene. The event renewed calls for federal anti-lynching legislation that never passed. Missouri's deprivation of the educational rights of its black citizens resulted in the first major case to crack the stranglehold of Plessy v. Ferguson's approbation of separate, but "equal" segregation of America's black citizens. While not overruling Plessy, in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), the Supreme Court voted 6-2, that Missouri denied equal protection of the laws to Lloyd Gaines, when it refused his admission to a state law school, despite its willingness to pay his tuition for law school in a neighboring state. Sadly, Gaines disappeared before he could attend and the case has never been solved. In 1947, President Harry Truman nike free flyknit suomi , a former Klansman and Independence, Missouri native banned segregation in America's military. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court overturned a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that allowed the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants in housing deeds to prevent sales of homes to people of certain races. In Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), the Court held that enforcement of a deed banning the sale of a St. Louis home to "people of the Negro or Asian race," against an African-American purchaser violated the equal protection of the laws. Racially Motivated Violence And Hate Groups The racially motivated killing of musician Steve Harvey in a Kansas City, Missouri park in 1980 led to calls for a federal prosecution. Justice Department lawyers in Washington did not believe they could intercede because of legal restrictions. Police Brutality in The United States [ More Videos: Youtube Channel ]Alvin Sykes, a friend of Harvey, who grew up in poverty without receiving a high school diploma, thought otherwise. After countless hours researching federal statutes and court cases at a local library, he devised a legal strategy that was embraced by federal prosecutors who won a conviction against Harvey's killers. Sykes later sought justice for those killed in uncompleted
