It will come as a surprise to many in white America that ethnic cleansing is not something that is peculiar to Nazi Germany, Rwanda or Bosnia. American history shows that many communities here are guilty of it too. These communities banished their black citizens…often violently. Many of these communities remain virtually all white to this day.  Brothers Charles and James Brown traced their family tree to Pierce City, Missouri, and learned their ancestors had been forced out at gunpoint. Marco Williams produced a documentary titled Banished…How Whites Drove Blacks out of Town in America.

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Contributors:

Brothers Charles and James whose ancestors had been forced out of a Missouri town.

Producer Marco Williams’ documentary titled Banished…How Whites Drove Blacks Out Of Town in America

Additional information about this episode:

Independent Lens - Banished: American Ethnic Cleansings

Brief video on YouTube

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About the Project:

With this collection of archived interviews of St. Louis on the Air, we present an oral history of civil rights, the black experience, and race relations in St. Louis from 1847 to 2010.

Additional Resources:

The Beacon's Race Frankly Series:
An on-going community discussion around progress being made on the subject of race in the St. Louis metro area.

Eyes on the Prize:
A documentary from PBS's American Experience

FOCUS St. Louis project: Bridges Across Racial Polarization:
Get to know people whom you might not otherwise meet.

Missouri History Museum exhibit, Race: Are We So Different?
Learn the history of race, the role of science in that history, and the subtle and obtrusive expressions of race and racism in institutions and daily lives.

NAACP:
The nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.

Southern Poverty Law Center:
A nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.