Panel requested for area racial violence probe

It has kind of flown under the radar, but Congressman William Clay, D-St. Louis, has asked the U. S. House of Representatives to form a committee to investigate the removal of African Americans from six southwest Missouri communities between 1894 and 1901.
The goal is to examine "the feasibility and appropriateness of providing reparations to such residents," according to the bill description of House Resolution 1977 on the U. S. House of Representatives website.
The resolution, which has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, calls for an investigation of events that turned Aurora, Monett, Newburg, Pierce City, Cassville, and Webb City into so-called "Negro-free" communities at the turn of the century.
The genesis of the bill was explored in a June 2 St. Louis Post-Dispatch column by Sylvester Brown Jr. Charles Brown Jr., a former St. Louis public school teacher, was exploring his family history while recovering from a stroke. His quest took him to Peirce City (which is the way the city's name was originally spelled).
A front page article in the Aug. 25, 1901, St. Louis Post-Dispatch told how approximately 300 blacks were driven out of Peirce City and threatened with death if they ever returned...after three of them had already been killed, one by lynching.
Brown's column says, "The terror began after the body of Gisela E. Wild, a 23-year-old white, church-going socialite was found in the woods. Authorities suspected she was killed fending off a rapist. The Lawrence Chieftain, a local newspaper, described Wild as one of many 'sainted women' lost 'in defense of their purity.' Witnesses reported seeing a "Negro" in the vicinity of the killing. A mob of 1,000 angry, armed whites - some arriving by train, gathered to hunt down the killers."
That 1901 newspaper article said Peirce City joined the ranks of the other cities that had already been declared "colorless."
No one talked much about the horror of that 1901 time until Monett Times Editor Murray Bishoff wrote about it 14 years ago, stirring up a frenzy in a town that did not want to remember that part of its past.
When Brown was looking for an ancestor's grave, he received no help from the local cemetery association or the groundskeeper, the Post-Dispatch column reported. They offered no help in verifying his ancestor's remains and said Brown would have to pay back taxes and pay for an expensive DNA test.
Brown refused, went to court, and lost. His fortunes changed, the Post-Dispatch column said, when Marco Williams, co-owner of Two Tone Productions, Inc., a New York film company, contacted him, saying the company was filming a documentary about cities that had kicked out all of their black residents.
When it became known that the company was going to film Brown's efforts to recover his great-grandfather's body, Pierce City officials changed their minds and said Brown would not have to pay back taxes or pay for the DNA tests.
James Cobb's body was removed from the Pierce City cemetery with Brown and the film crew in attendance on June 2. The body was taken to Springfield to reunite Mr. Cobb with family members who relocated there after being driven out of Peirce City.