Heavy price paid for advancement goals

Colored Community Club (Cape Girardeau) put forward a "race man" -- Elijah Lambert -- as candidate for school board in April 1920. The Club proposed two goals: school board representation and "a Race man on the police force" -- rightful ambitions, but forming in the era of Jim Crow limiting ideologies and Ku Klux Klan terrorization surfacing in public life. Cape's Black citizens were on a steady respectable rise -- businesses, restaurants, literary clubs, an exemplary school, World War I veterans and two active, mission-minded churches carved meaningful spaces in the larger community. It seemed the time was right to take on equal opportunities to lead and accept responsibilities of citizenship.

Hattie Jones reported: "During the city election of the past week a deal of interest was shown by both white and Black races of this city. The campaign was one of the hottest this place has ever known. The bone of contention ... a race man being placed in the race for School Director. Sentiment ran high, so much so that many race men were actually afraid to vote for our candidate. Such a feeling of timidity should not be permitted to exist in a community where men are determined that all citizens should exercise their right of equal suffrage. While Mr. Lambert was defeated, yet he received 132 votes. This fact is proof positive that ours are not a hopeless cause. We do not take this defeat as final; but rather as an incentive to keep on." (Argus newspaper, April 16, 1920)

A Black candidate for public office incensed many in the white community. Black voter turnout swayed the vote outcome for mayor. Soon, the core of Cape's Black leadership began to be dismantled.

A 400-signature petition demanded Lincoln School principal Oliver Nance be fired for perceived support of Lambert's candidacy.

The denomination's presiding elder saw fit to relocate pastor the Rev. M.S. Smith from St. James AME Church to a church in Kirkwood.

NAACP president and pastor of Second Baptist Church, the Rev. William Hill, also left the pulpit of Second Baptist Church for a church in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Jones' Argus reporting spared no criticism of the "high handed movement," to remove Nance and lamented "great storms of abuse" raised over the desire to integrate the police force. Jones' byline disappeared. Weeks passed without Cape Girardeau news in the Argus. Jones left town and opened a school in a Pemiscot County sharecropper settlement.

Nance, Smith and Hill first pushed for municipal pool access for Black children, then election and policing advocacy added public criticism. Whether Jones, Smith and Hill left of their own accord, or personally felt it advisable amid growing racial tensions, is speculative. Nance remained Lincoln School principal until 1924.

Cape Girardeau's police department remained white until 1941, when Joe Woods was hired for limited duty in Smelterville. Johnny C. James was appointed to the Cape Girardeau School Board in 1989, but the Rev. William Bird Sr. was the first man of color elected to the school board in 1991.