Mon January 16, 2012 Missouri History Museum exhibit traces
early history of African American community in Kirkwood An
exhibit now on display at the Missouri History Museum takes a
look at the early history of the African American community in
Kirkwood. St. Louis Public Radio’s Julie Bierach spoke with
Curator David Lobbig about the multimedia project that traces
the first settlement before the Civil War to suburban
development after World War II. When you and your colleagues
came up with the idea for “Kirkwood Roots,” what did you
envision? We really wanted to be honest and true to the people
in Kirkwood, the African American community in Kirkwood. We
wanted to give a feeling and a sense of what peoples’ lives were
like in that period that we’re representing here before Kirkwood
was founded in 1853. Before the Civil War, there were African
American communities or settlements within this region. And the
period ends in that time of intensive suburbanization after the
Second World War. We were looking at that p