by Bretonrae

Created on: February 07, 2009   Last Updated: February 14, 2009

200 years post the abolition of Slavery, how far have we really come?

Salus populi suprema lex esto (Latin "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law") is the Missouri state motto. As a young child living in Missouri in 1950, I learned a great deal about that state motto included in the state Seal in 1822 and onto the Missouri state flag in 1913. My father had moved our home to Wardell, Missouri from Ekalaka, Montana where he had held his first high school teaching position after his graduation from Indiana University. Though it had been a great two years there among those good people, Dad wasn't fond of horseback riding and deep snow so he sought out a position nearer to his Indiana home.

The flat fairly grassless terrain around Wardell had poor soil content and actually was laid out on an old flood plain. The surrounding lands were in the middle of the booming cotton growing business and, indeed, even the public schools set their scheduling around the cotton crop work. I started my first grade class there on my sixth birthday on July 9th. Schools were let out when it was time to pick only resuming when the children were not needed in the fields in late fall. Well, not all the children were needed in the fields, but most families had interest in local cotton crops.

To this very day, I remember how ugly the town and crop fields looked. In the middle of each huge cotton field stood an unpainted house with no windows or screens and broken steps or roof. Mosquitoes were a particular problem in the area. Usually there was only a walking path from the main road out to the houses. Water had to be carried to the houses from wells in town. They had no plumbing or wells. In those homes which were provided by the land owners, lived the sharecroppers and their families. There was very little furniture in those homes. Many families had up to sixteen members living together. When it was time to pick the cotton, all the members of the family above the age of four or five years old picked the cotton. I saw black children my age and younger dragging heavy canvass bags in the dust through the cotton rows in the wilting heat.

On one very hot day, I walked down the street toward the dry goods store where my father worked to supplement our income during the school break for the cotton picking. I thought about getting a piece of peppermint candy there. As I approached the store, an older black man coming toward me, stepped off the sidewalk and doffed his cap. He said, "morning'

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