In his new project, Before Ferguson, Beyond Ferguson, Dick Weiss, a former, longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor, is pulling together multigenerational stories of local families, focusing on education and using real-life experiences to animate an often dry public policy battle. Unlike newspaper journalism, in which “you tell the story and let the chips fall,” this project’s intended to get results.
“The idea was to do deeply reported stories that will shine a light on what racial inequity means in St. Louis, especially around education. So we are taking individual families and covering them in a multigenerational way that puts it all in political and historical context.”
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“Civil rights isn’t just police dogs and fire hoses at protests; it’s also just parents trying to raise kids to have a life. And you had to be really creative to get around some of those obstacles.”
“My parents dragged me to ACLU meetings when I was 10, and I heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak…but I had no idea what was going on 4 miles away from me, and how ugly this community had been and to some extent still is.”
“Researching the Caldwell family and what it was like for them in the ’50s, I saw an ad for carhops at a drive-in on Brentwood. It explicitly said ‘white young men.’ Then it advertised for dishwashers: ‘clean black men.’”
“I asked white businessmen what would make them want to read these stories. They said it was unlikely they would read such a story unless someone they knew and trusted recommended it to them. They would be reluctant to read a story that simply made them feel guilty.”
“I was asked to speak at a church in Kirkwood, and I took Evita Caldwell and her 8-year-old nephew Jayceon. The way it was in my head, I’d speak for 15 minutes and talk about the project, and then Evita would talk, and then we’d bring up Jayceon, who’s 8 years old and cute and would talk for about a minute. Well, he grabs the mic, and he’d read the story and talked about it with his mom, and he’s contextualizing it, and he’s eloquent. I’m thinking, Good thing I didn’t try to speak after him.”
Before Ferguson, Beyond Ferguson is hoping for more speaking invitations from schools, churches, and community organizations, to keep this discussion flowing forward.
