The Jefferson Barracks Visitors Center housed the Missouri History Museum’s traveling civil rights exhibit — highlighting the history and resilience of Black lives in St. Louis — on Feb. 21. 

Similar events have been hosted before by the county’s Parks and Recreation Department for Black History Month, particularly in North County, but this was the first held at Jefferson Barracks.

“It’s important to showcase what the region has to offer in the form of civil rights,” Jeffrey Edison, Jefferson Barracks Museum educator, said. “We have been kind of at the center of civil rights for so long. Lots of folks think about the Dred Scott case, but we have a lot more to offer. We have a prominent Black community that may not know a lot of these stories, especially within Jefferson Barracks itself. This has a history of Black men serving, Black women serving, so we wanted to bring that knowledge and showcase it to the community members here.”  

Titled “1st in Civil Rights,” the exhibit ran from 9 a.m. through 4:30 p.m., with specific topics and themes discussed at various points throughout the day. Such topics included how local newspaper editors in the St. Louis Metro East created a collective memory of Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination, the East St. Louis race riot and the Black community in St. Louis during World War I and World War II.

“It’s an important lasting impact,” Edison said. “This is a boots-on-the-ground movement. It starts with the young kids all the way up to your older generations, and I think there’s something in this exhibit for everyone.”