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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
1
Takeaways From a Tough Court Case
2
Top Jobs for Teens and Students
2
What Happens When Both Parties Share the Blame
3
How a Cat Saved an Army Veteran in Need
3
Quinoa Veggie Bowl
4
Lucile Bluford’s Tireless Crusade for Racial Justice
spanned an era of dramatic change in race relations in Missouri.
of the NAACP, Bluford continued to apply to Mizzou and file lawsuits until the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the university to admit her in 1941. Mizzou subsequently closed its journalism program. Although Bluford never attended classes there, Mizzou eventually reversed course and awarded her a medal and an honorary doctorate. Bluford worked with other Black women professionals in 1958 to end segregation in Kansas City department stores. The group achieved its goal through the peaceful means favored by leading activists at that time. Later, Bluford was saddened to witness the devastating Kansas City Riot in 1968. She campaigned against police brutality, which she saw not only during the riot but in everyday interactions between police and residents. To commemorate the achievements of the woman who became known as “the conscience of Kansas City,” the city’s public library named a branch after Bluford in 1988.
Bluford considered her job a calling rather than an occupation. On the role of The Call in attracting public attention to issues of justice, she wrote, “Every movement for the advancement of black citizens has been championed and fought for through its news pages, its banner headlines, and through its editorial columns.” Born on July 1, 1911, into a middle-class family in North Carolina, she moved with her family at the age of 10 to Kansas City. In Missouri, which at the time was a Jim Crow state with “separate but equal” policies, Bluford was required to walk past an all-white elementary school near her home to attend a segregated school for Blacks two miles away. Bluford applied in 1939 to the University of Missouri’s highly regarded journalism school and won acceptance, only to be rejected after the university discovered she was Black. With the backing
One of Missouri’s best-known, most respected civil rights activists and citizens was born this month more than a century ago. Lucile Bluford was a well known journalist and opponent of segregation. Her 60-year career as editor, manager, and eventually co-owner of The Call, an influential Black weekly newspaper, A 70-YEAR CRUSADE A BLACK JOURNALIST’S LIFELONG BATTLE FOR EQUALITY
Practicing in Missouri and Illinois
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