Miles traces Missouri's path to school desegregation

Friday, February 6, 2009

Debra Miles will speak on "The Road to Brown v. Board of Education: Legal Cases along the Way in Missouri," at 10 a.m., Feb. 7, at the Arrow Rock State Historic Site Visitor Center, according to a news release from Kathy Borgman, executive director of Friends of Arrow Rock.

Miles is the assistant general counsel for Missouri Department of Mental Health.

She is an authority on the long and complex history of desegregation in public schools, the practice of court-appointed counsel for slaves in Missouri as defined by the 1820 state constitution and the realities of mob violence against the individual as seen in lynchings of African Americans during the late 19th and well into the 20th century, Borgman said.

The presentation, sponsored by the Friends of Arrow Rock and the Arrow Rock State Historic Site, is a service of The State Historical Society of Missouri as part of its Missouri History Speakers' Bureau.

This event is the first in the 2009 First Saturday Lecture Series conducted February through May in Arrow Rock.

Future topics funded by the Friends of Arrow Rock National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant are "Santa Fe Trade: An 18th Century Economic Stimulus Measure," "George, Tom and Harry: 100 Years of Missouri Art and Politics" and "Rediscovering the Tallgrass Prairie."

The Speakers' Bureau of the State Historical Society of Missouri provides speakers on Missouri history topics to adult not-for-profit groups throughout the state without cost to the host institutions.

For more information, contact Todd Christine at 573-882-7083 or at ChristineT@umsystem.edu or visit http://shs.umsystem.edu/speakersbureau.

On the Net:
www.arrowrock.org
www.friendsar.org
www.mostateparks.com