African Americans played an important role in Joplin’s history.\u00a0 Although segregation prevailed in the local mining industry, African Americans worked backbreaking labor intensive jobs as hod carriers, day laborers, carpenters, washerwomen, and other less desirable occupations.<\/p>\n
Joplin newspapers often echoed the narrow minded racial beliefs of the time by perpetuating common stereotypes of African Americans as criminal, subhuman individuals.\u00a0 In comparison to some local papers, such as the Stotts City Sunbeam<\/em> and the Springfield Leader<\/em> (which was founded by fire-breathing former Confederate Daniel Curran Kennedy), the Joplin papers were fairly tame.\u00a0 While African Americans were most often portrayed in a negative light by the papers, sometimes a positive story would appear.<\/p>\n It’s often easy to look back over the last century, even two centuries, of American history and fall prey to dangerous generalizations.\u00a0 This story illustrates that while racism certainly did exist in Joplin, it was not pervasive.<\/p>\n In the early fall of 1906, a crippled black man drove his blind mule along the streets of Joplin.\u00a0 He was a well known figure as he drove a wagon that carried advertising signs to drum up business for local merchants.\u00a0 The old man was, \u201cold, feeble, and helpless, and few would take advantage of the poor old man’s infirmities to make him the object of a stinging jest.\u201d<\/p>\n As the man and his mule approached Sixth Street and Moffet Avenue, a group of three white boys in a delivery wagon spied them.\u00a0 One of the boys shouted, \u201cWhoa there, mule.\u00a0 Ha ha ha, look at the blind mule.\u00a0 Look at the nigger.\u201d The other two began laughing which a Globe<\/em> reporter said, \u201csound as near like the braying of an ass as anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n The elderly black man sat quietly but onlookers could see that \u201chis feelings were deeply hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the boys called out, \u201cWhy don’t you get an automobile?\u201d The other two began to yell when a white miner named Fred Winchel came upon the scene.\u00a0 Winchel, incensed at the abuse the boys were heaping on the old man, jumped into the delivery wagon and grabbed one of the delivery boys.\u00a0 He jerked the boy out of his seat and out onto the street.<\/p>\n Winchel growled, \u201cDo you want to fight?\u201d The boy, frightened by the miner, stammered, \u201cN-n-n-no.\u201d Winchel, still angry, snarled, \u201cThen take that you cowardly whelp!\u201d before he slapped the boy viciously on the ear.\u00a0 The boy’s two companions tried to drive away but Winchel ordered them to stop.\u00a0 The two boys complied.<\/p>\n Once again Winchel jumped into the wagon and drug the remaining two boys out.\u00a0 He asked, \u201cDo you want to fight?\u201d The boys, like their companion, replied that they did not.\u00a0 Winchel boxed their ears and sent them on their way.\u00a0 He was overheard to say, \u201cI ought to be kicked for not cleanin’ every one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Source: Joplin Globe <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" African Americans played an important role in Joplin’s history.\u00a0 Although segregation prevailed in the local mining industry, African Americans worked backbreaking labor intensive jobs as hod carriers, day laborers, carpenters, washerwomen, and other less desirable occupations. Joplin newspapers often echoed the narrow minded racial beliefs of the time by perpetuating common stereotypes of African Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[407,328,52,31,409,408,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historicjoplin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}