Chapter Ten


St. Louis

“Look! There's the Arch!” I poked my husband in the ribs and pointed. From our vantage point in the sky, the Mississippi River looked like a giant dragon coiling its way through the lush Missouri flatland. The moment our flight landed, I was up and out of my seat, eager to get started on the next phase of the research. Consulting the map I had purchased in anticipation of our adventures, I discovered that Washington Park Cemetery, the final resting place of John Bird Wilkins, was literally ten minutes from the airport.

Perfect, I thought to myself. First things first. Time to say hello to my ancestors.

Washington Park Cemetery is located on the edge of the city, bordered on one side by a major highway and on the other side by Lambert Airport. In 1938 when my great-grandfather was buried, St. Louisans spent their eternal lives in worlds rigidly segregated by race. White people buried their dead in nearby Oak Grove or Valhalla Cemeteries, while members of St. Louis's striving black middle class were laid to rest in Washington Park Cemetery. Christopher K. Robinson, John Bird's boss at the St. Louis Clarion, had been interred here, along with two of my grandfather's older brothers, Aravelle and Charles.

Turning off a busy road dotted by fast-food chains and cheap hotels, John edged our rental car through the sagging wrought-iron gates that guarded the entrance to the graveyard. Despite jet planes roaring overhead and six lanes of cars whooshing past on the expressway, the place gave off an air of profound solitude. A placard near the entranceway proclaimed that Washington Park Cemetery was a historic landmark and gave an address where donations could be sent. Judging from the condition of the grounds, fund-raising efforts had not gone well. The place was deserted. The small frame building that had once served as the cemetery's office sat empty, its windows covered by boards. The grass had not been mowed recently, and many tombstones had toppled over.

Although my researcher, Mariah Cooper, had provided me with the plot number, I now realized that finding my great-grandfather's grave was not going to be easy. John took the western half of the graveyard, and I took the eastern half, but our work was hampered by the fact that large sections of the cemetery had been allowed to return to the wild. Methodically, we picked our way through the brambles, stumbling over the uneven ground as we searched for a marker or plot number that would enable us to find John Bird's grave. It had rained recently; the grass was heavy and wet. Tombstones leaned crazily amid the trees, hanging vines, thickets of bramble, dense underbrush, and dead animals.

Scraping my shin against a half-submerged headstone, I recalled Mariah Cooper telling me that my great-grandfather might not even be buried here anymore. When the airport was expanded several years ago, a number of Washington Park's bodies had been moved to other cemeteries around the city. Weird depressions in the sodden earth marked spots where graves had been removed, or perhaps just flooded out. As I stepped over a large tangle of vines swallowing up yet another tombstone, I prayed that John Bird's body would still be here and that his grave, unlike many of the others I passed, would have a proper stone to mark its place.

When I finally spotted his headstone, I couldn't stop myself from shouting. The Wilkins family had either had extremely good foresight or perhaps were just plain lucky. They buried my great-grandfather on the high ground.

“I've found him! I've found him!” I hollered, running heedlessly through the wet grass. “John Bird's grave is still here.” Inscribed simply with the word “Wilkins,” a granite tombstone marked the spot where my great-grandfather was buried, together with Lena Murphy and four of their children. I laid a bouquet of flowers on the ground next to his tombstone, and I knelt down to have a chat.

“Well, John Bird. I am here to greet you at last. I bring you greetings and salutations from your ‘other’ family, and hope that you are having a peaceful afterlife. Whether you made it to Heaven or not, I don't know. I guess only God can judge. But now I need your help. Please help me reclaim the history of the Wilkins family and find out what really happened to J. Ernest in Washington.”

As I was speaking, my eyes filled with tears. They couldn't have been tears of mourning. After all, John Bird had been dead for many years by the time I was born. I was profoundly happy to find my great-grandfather after a search of more than two years, so maybe I was shedding tears of joy. Or perhaps my tears simply reflected my frustration with human mortality in general. Did we really think we could stave off our ultimate extinction by building these pitiful stone markers to tell ensuing generations that we had, in fact, been here? What did it all matter, anyway? Washington Park Cemetery offered all the proof anyone needed to understand that our physical presence here on earth is fragile and short-lived. The old saying in the Bible had it right: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

As John and I drove out of Washington Park's sagging wrought-iron gates and back into the twenty-first century, I made myself a promise. I would not rest until I had done everything I could to document and preserve my family's history for future generations. Time may be impossible to defeat, but through the telling of the family story, it can at least be extended. After checking into our motel near the airport, John and I drove to the St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh Road. Here, we hoped to find copies of the St. Louis Clarion, where John Bird worked. We would also look for any articles about him in the St. Lou is Argus. Stepping inside the library, I was quickly disabused of the notion that I was the only person on the planet interested in finding out about my ancestors. The St. Louis County Library has an entire floor devoted to genealogical research, and every table was filled with researchers digging through old directories or scrolling through microfilm. John and I made ourselves comfortable, collected several rolls of microfilm from the librarian, and for the next several hours lost ourselves in reading about the black history of St. Louis.

In 1860 a farmer named Charles M. Elleard purchased a tract of land just outside St. Louis. On this land Elleard raised horses, grew crops, and operated a horticulture center. This area eventually became the town Elleardsville, known to local residents as “The Ville.” After the town was annexed by the City of St. Louis in 1876, African Americans began to settle there in increasing numbers. Soon The Ville was home to two large black churches—Antioch Baptist, organized in 1878, and St. James African Methodist Episcopal, organized in 1881. The African American population in St. Louis grew by 60 percent between 1910 and 1920. As blacks from the South flooded into the city seeking greater employment opportunities, The Ville became the undisputed center of black St. Louis. Sumner High School, the first secondary school for African Americans west of the Mississippi, was built in The Ville in 1910, followed by John Marshall Elementary School in 1918.1

In 1917 the African American hair products tycoon Annie Malone built an office building in The Ville at the corner of St. Ferdinand and Pendleton Avenues. Occupying an entire city block, the building housed the company's office, its manufacturing plant, and Poro College, where hundreds of beauticians were trained to dispense Malone's products throughout the country. Poro College became a central gathering place and symbol of pride for the neighborhood, and it hosted concerts, lectures, and community activities.²

In an era without television or radio, people depended on the college's programs to keep them abreast of the latest developments. A well-informed person might read as many as three newspapers a day. Since the white media rarely covered events taking place in the black community, African Americans created their own newspapers. By 1920 there were fifty-four black-owned newspapers in the state of Missouri alone. As the epicenter of black St. Louis, The Ville was home to three black newspapers during this period.3

In 1912 J. E. and William Mitchell began to publish the St. Louis Argus as a weekly community newspaper. Supported by the city's Republican Party machine, the Argus could be purchased at groceries, newsstands, and shoe-shine parlors throughout the black community. The Argus documented the doings of St. Louis's growing black population. It also gave its readers an African American editorial perspective on national and international events.⁴ When the St. Louis city council passed a segregation ordinance in 1916 that barred blacks from owning or renting property in white neighborhoods, the Argus waged an editorial war to get the legislation defeated. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared the ordinance unconstitutional, the paper celebrated with banner-sized headlines.

At the end of the First World War, the Argus had become successful enough to purchase new office space on Market Street. The building was valued at over thirty thousand dollars and contained offices, a meeting hall, and a ballroom.⁵ By this time the Argus was the major source of news not only for African Americans in St. Louis but for blacks throughout the state. The Argus reported on the doings of Farmington's black folk in a special column written by Dayse Baker.

Sitting in the St. Louis County Library more than eighty years later, John and I read about the school graduations, church socials, and parties that formed the fabric of Farmington's black social life in the years after the First World War. “Mr. Arvilla Wilkins and wife are enjoying a pleasant week with their mother, Mrs. S. O. Wilkins. Farmington delights in the intellectual activity of its young people. Miss Corinne Wilkins will soon assume the work of teaching in the Coffman vicinity,” Baker noted in her column on November 21, 1915. When Corinne, J. Ernest's older sister, came back to visit her mother the following month, Baker reported it. When my grandfather returned home from college for Christmas that year, Baker reported it, referring to him as “Ernestine,” the name by which he had been known in elementary school.⁶ My grandfather changed his name to J. Ernest during his first year at Lincoln, but to his elders in Farmington he was still Ernestine, Susie Wilkins's youngest boy.

The Argus was unabashedly Republican and made no pretense at giving an independent view of political events. Christopher K. Robinson, whose company had printed the Argus until the paper acquired its own plant, began to publish the Independent Clarion in 1914. To distinguish itself from the Argus, the Clarion stressed its political independence from the Republican Party. Some people speculated that Robinson, who seems to have been a contentious character, started the Clarion in a fit of pique when the Argus stopped using his printing company. During the five years that he ran the Independent Clarion, Robinson's muckraking style angered many in the community, including his wife. In 1919 she sued for divorce, and at the same time Robinson was sued for libel. When his business partners, fearing more legal problems, withdrew their support, Robinson was forced to shut the Clarion down. Although a group of businessmen made another attempt to publish the paper in 1923 the venture was not successful, and in 1925 the Clarion went out of business for good.7

Was John Bird Wilkins the editor of this feisty and short-lived newspaper? That afternoon in the St. Louis County Library, I found a lengthy Argus article describing a Christmas party given by C. K. Robinson and his wife for the Clarion 's employees in 1915. Although many of the guests are listed by name, my great-grandfather is not mentioned. But he seems to have had some connection with the paper. According to a 1923 Argus article, when Bird's son Samuel was a young boy he worked as an apprentice for the Clarion.⁸ In his obituary John Bird is described as the Clarion's “assistant editor.”⁹ Perhaps he contributed an occasional article or interview? Given Bird's intellect and obvious gift for words, it's easy to imagine that Robinson's paper would have welcomed an occasional contribution from my great-grandfather.

John Bird's city directory and census entries also lend support to the claim that he worked for the Clarion in at least some capacity. In 1919 he is listed in the St. Louis city directory as “Howard B. Wilkins, laborer.” But by 1920 my great-grandfather is able to list himself as “Howard B. Wilkins, newspaper editor.”¹⁰

After several hours spent poring over microfilm in the St. Louis County Library, John and I were eager to get out and see The Ville for ourselves. I carefully noted down the addresses I had found in the city directory for “Howard B. Wilkins” and family. Then we left the library, gassed up the rental car, and drove into the city along Martin Luther King Drive.

When my great-grandfather lived here in the 1920s and 1930s this street, then called Easton Avenue, was bustling with commerce. Joe Wolff 's Shoe Company, “the place to buy shoes for the family,” stood in the 4100 block. A photographer's shop, a tailor's, and a dry-cleaning establishment were located nearby. The Singer Company sold sewing machines at number 4257, while the Easton-Taylor Newsstand offered candies, cigarettes, magazines, greeting cards, and books for sale two blocks down. Dr. Aldrich Brooks, a black dentist, built an office building to house his dental practice in the 4200 block. In that same block the Elleardsville Financial Corporation, started by eight African American businessmen, was available to help local residents acquire loans to build or repair their homes.¹¹

As John and I drove slowly down King Drive, surveying the neighborhood, there was little sign of present-day commercial activity. Many of the buildings had been torn down or boarded up while others simply stood empty, a mute and melancholy testament to the neighborhood's neglected status. The headquarters of the St. Louis Argus occupied the middle of the 4500 block. At the height of its popularity, the Argus had been one of the most important black newspapers in the country. But as desegregation opened opportunities for African Americans to work outside of the black community, many historically black institutions languished.12 Both the Argus building and its surrounding neighborhood reflected this downward spiral. The building's windows were covered with burglar bars; a glass panel in its front door had been replaced by plywood.

After stopping to snap a few pictures, John and I drove on, eager to see if the home where my great-grandfather had lived for many of his years in St. Louis still existed. After making a U-turn on King Drive, we drove southeast and turned left onto 42nd Street. There were vacant lots everywhere. Some blocks had only one or two houses left standing, but other blocks showed signs of revitalization, their houses sporting wrought-iron fences and well-maintained yards.

The block where John Bird Wilkins and his family once lived was quiet and peaceful. Unlike many other blocks in the neighborhood, most of the buildings on this part of Labadie Avenue remained intact. Small brick bungalows with covered porches lined each side of the street. My husband pulled the car to the curb, and I got out to look for number 4216, only to find that the house where my great-grandfather once lived had been torn down. Still, the ground remained. He had walked here, perhaps planting flowers in the front yard or playing with his younger children in the backyard. As I contemplated the overgrown lot where his house once stood, I tried to imagine what life in that home might have been like.

In 1919 John Bird was living at 4216 Labadie Avenue under the name of Howard B. Wilkins. By this time many of his children with Lena Murphy had left home. Their son Howard was a laborer, McKinley was a janitor, and Everett worked as a mail clerk. In 1914, in Little Rock, Arkansas, John Bird and Lena had given birth to their last child, a boy they named William.¹³ Their son Samuel, who had apprenticed with the Clarion as a boy, was now in his early twenties. A graduate of Shorter College in Little Rock, Samuel trained as a linotypist and now worked at the Argus. On March 30, 1923, the paper wrote a short feature on the boy, describing him as “the youngest colored Linotype Operator in the country.” After letting their readers know that Samuel, despite his young age, was already married, the Argus article then mentioned that his father, “Dr. J. B. Wilkins, is a well known theologican [sic] of St. Louis and president of the Business Men's Bible Training School.”¹⁴

The Bible Training School, another one of my great-grandfather's ventures, was never listed in the St. Louis business directory. It is possible the school was less of an official “school” and more of an informal study group that met at John Bird's Labadie Avenue home. Although he does not seem to have been officially associated with any particular church, my great-grandfather did speak as a guest pastor on at least one occasion. On July 2, 1921, the following article appeared in the Chicago Defender 's column “Our Weekly Sermon”:

Religion Is Love
By Rev. J. B. Wilkins, Cairo, ILL.
(sent by Mrs. W. C. Simmons)
RELIGION IS LOVE. It is a creative force that demands of us completeness. It is the motive in God's creation. It is all that He demands of man. It is that which gives to us the highest conception of our relations to God and to creation. It sweetly calls us ever on toward fairer lands and upward to the lofty peaks of glorified vision where stands the cross “towering o'er the wrecks of Time.” If we have failed in wisdom if a tangle comes in the web of life Love smooths it out for us. All things can be accomplished by its aid and kept right by its power. Love does not have to see to know that everything is all right. It sees through clouds of our ignorance and discovers in us a beauty which it alone creates. It completes life. If we have been unkind Love puts itself into the gap. If there has been a harsh word Love transmutes it, changes it into an excuse for us. It awakens the song that sleeps in every heart, and it is Love's fingers that touch the chords of the instrument which leads the orchestra of the spheres. It smites the sealed fountains and they flow in bubbling brooks that leap into the rivers that bring joy and fertility to parched lands.15

John Bird Wilkins may have been a man of many identities, a bigamist, and a congenital liar, but for me his sermons ring true, expressing profound truths in a clear and convincing manner. I hope the congregation in Cairo, a small Illinois town on the Mississippi River, appreciated his address that summer Sunday. Perhaps my great-grandfather was even invited to return. If so, however, I could find no record of the sermon he might have given.

As I continued to absorb the atmosphere on the street where John Bird once lived, I wondered whether he had ever run across J. Ernest or his brothers around the neighborhood. Like many black communities of the time, The Ville was small, less than one square mile.¹⁶ Given the limited employment opportunities available to blacks at the time, it seems inevitable that Bird's two sets of children would have come in contact with each other. J. Ernest's older brothers, Aravelle and Byrd, were both living in the area in 1920, working as mail clerks for the railroad. Just like my grandfather, John Bird and Lena's oldest son, Everett, served in the 809th Pioneers during the war.¹⁷

J. Ernest was such a brilliant student that he finished his secondary education at Lincoln Institute an entire year early.¹⁸ Before heading off to college at the University of Illinois, he worked briefly at a normal school that Lincoln had opened on Cottage Avenue, in The Ville. In a picture taken of the Sumner Teaching College's faculty that year, my grandfather stands in the front row, sporting an elegant tweed suit and looking very professorial.¹⁹

The teaching college was located in the heart of The Ville, less than a mile from John Bird's home. Had J. Ernest ever bumped into his father at the movies or while shopping for groceries along Easton Avenue? After he went away to the University of Illinois in 1914, J. Ernest stayed with his brothers Aravelle and Byrd during his summer vacations, working to earn money for the next year's tuition. The brothers lived only two miles away from their father and his other family.

J. Ernest and his brothers were probably aware that, in October 1922, John Bird's sons Samuel and Theodore were involved in a serious scandal. According to the Chicago Defender, the pair were arrested for stealing bonus checks intended for army veterans. The thefts were discovered when a former soldier wrote to inquire about his missing bonus and was informed that the check had allegedly been signed by him and endorsed over to “S. B. Wilkins.” Once the forgeries were discovered, it wasn't long before Samuel and Theodore were arrested on felony charges.20 It seems that Samuel, at least, did not spend very much time in jail, because less than six months later, he is working as “the fastest colored linotypist” for the Argus.²¹

By the time of this scandal, my grandfather had just started his legal career. As someone who was beginning to make a name for himself among Chicago's light-skinned elite, J. Ernest would have found the whole situation deeply embarrassing. It's likely my grandfather would have seen the arrest of his two half brothers as further confirmation of John Bird's failings both as a father and as a human being.

After my grandfather's graduation from law school, his name began to appear in the papers. In 1922 he was elected Grand Keeper of Records for his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. In 1929 J. Ernest was awarded the Laurel Wreath, Kappa Alpha Psi's highest honor.²² Both these events were widely covered in the black press. My guess is that John Bird (who was, after all, a self-proclaimed “newspaperman”) was well aware of his boy's success.

Did father and son ever reconcile? It would be nice to think that sometime later in life, perhaps as adults, they were able to sit down and talk. But it doesn't seem likely. Aunt Marjory, a colorful if not always reliable source, used to tell the following story: “J. Ernest's father was a ne'er-do-well and wanted nothing to do with J. Ernest when the boy was little. But when your grandfather started to get well known, his father changed his tune and tried to visit him in Chicago. Now that J. Ernest was doing well, the old man wanted to get back in touch. He even went by and knocked on your grandfather's door. But J. Ernest refused to see him. And that was it. They never spoke after that.”

As John and I continued to absorb the atmosphere along Labadie Avenue, the sun, which had been broiling down on us for much of the day, ducked behind a cloud. A screen door banged shut somewhere further down the block. John put his arm around me and gave me a gentle squeeze. “We should probably get moving if you want to see the rest of The Ville today,” he said. I nodded, and after taking one final snapshot, got back in our rental car.

The next place I wanted to see was at 4407 Kennerly Avenue, where John Bird Wilkins had spent the last eight years of his life. On this block, as on many of the streets in The Ville, several houses had been razed and John Bird's former home was now a vacant lot. But there were also signs of renewed life in the neighborhood. A large modern church stood directly across the street. Families relaxing on their front porches eyed us curiously. The sight of a balding white man and a light-skinned black woman emerging from a rental car to stare reverently at an empty lot was definitely an attention-grabber.

Before I could worry too much about the spectacle we were providing for the locals, John called out, “Carolyn, look! There's a bird over there! Maybe he's come back to help us.”

When it comes to matters of the spirit, I can never be sure whether my husband is being serious. My involvement in the Santeria group had taxed our marriage severely, so I was very careful when referencing the supernatural in John's presence. But sure enough, a robin was hopping about on the ground where my great-grandfather's house once stood.

“Yes, John Bird. I see you,” I said to myself. “You're an elusive character, but I am doing my level best to document your story.” The bird cocked its head provocatively and stared at me. But when I bent down to take its picture, it flew away. For no logical reason at all, I felt the presence of my ancestors as my husband and I got back into the car and drove away.

The next stop on our list was Antioch Baptist Church, where John Bird's funeral had been held. Founded in 1878, Antioch is the oldest church in The Ville, and its building dominated the corner of North Market Street. A green indoor-outdoor carpet covered the steps leading to the church's entrance, while a sign in front announced the sermon topic for the following Sunday. In 1915, when my great-grandfather was living nearby, Antioch Baptist Church had a membership roll of five hundred people and was in the process of raising money for a new sanctuary.23 The church's size and prestige would have drawn John Bird and Lena to it like a magnet.

Lena may have been a fairly regular member. However, John Bird had once been in charge of his own large church. It is difficult to imagine him sitting in a back pew for too many Sundays, listening to someone else's preaching. But we do know that my great-grandfather visited the church on at least one occasion. A brief blurb in the Argus on March 10, 1916, notes that “Rev. H. B. Wilkins, associate editor of the Clarion, ” worshipped at Antioch Baptist Church and was scheduled to speak at the evening service the following Sunday.²⁴

Although no longer the charismatic figure he once had been, John Bird continued to preach and teach into his late seventies. In 1927 he returned to Bethesda Baptist Church in Chicago to preach at its fortieth anniversary celebration. Interviewed by Evangeline Roberts from the Chicago Defender, my great-grandfather was as flamboyant as ever. Now calling himself Dr. J. B. Wilkins, he described himself as an “author, lecturer and psychologist.” In this interview, he gave himself a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and claimed to have been the third black man to graduate from Harvard. And, in keeping with the day's headlines (the psychopathic murderers Leopold and Loeb were receiving nationwide publicity), John Bird also claimed to have “prepared the psychological evaluations used by renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow” in a recent Chicago criminal case.25

And yet, mixed right in with his bogus resume and shameless self-promotion, my great-grandfather continued to expound a surprisingly modern religious philosophy: “My system of theology deals with the subject in reference to the part the Christian man is to play in this world. I am trying to deal with religion as a means to an end. It is my desire to show the effect of religion on the individual and what good results from being a Christian, not after death, but now!” Reflecting back on his controversial career as Bethesda's pastor forty years ago John Bird stated, “I was a consistent meddler in public affairs and took time off from singing and praying to look about me and see what was going on. I began to study the emotions of our people. I was interested in knowing whether real religion had anything to do with emotion, or whether emotion had anything to do with real religion.”²⁶

Although my great-grandfather would live another nine years, this 1927 Defender article is the last time I was able to find him written up in the press. On August 6, 1938, John Bird Wilkins suffered a heart attack and died at 10:35 that evening at St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis. According to his death certificate, my great-grandfather was eighty-seven years old.

In classic John Bird Wilkins fashion, the two obituaries published to announce his death give conflicting biographical information. In the Chicago Defender, he is described as “Rev. J. D. [sic] Wilkins, minister and teacher.” According to this obituary, he was ordained in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1870 and befriended Frederick Douglass while attending Howard University. He worked for Horace Greeley while a college student and edited the New Citizen in Brownsville, Tennessee.²⁷ As usual, most of these claims do not hold up to close scrutiny. Horace Greeley, the famous newspaper editor, died in 1872. He would have been on his last legs, in New York, during the time that John Bird was supposedly a college student at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. It seems unlikely that my great-grandfather could have worked for Greeley and gone to Howard at the same time. Nor is my great-grandfather mentioned anywhere in the 413 pages of Robert Chadwell Williams's biography, Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom.²⁸

Howard University, like the many other colleges John Bird claimed he attended, has no record of his ever having been a student. And he certainly was not ordained in Little Rock in 1870. As we know, in 1870, my great-grandfather was living in Oxford, Mississippi, and did not come to Little Rock until 1893. By the time he arrived in Little Rock, John Bird had already worked as a Baptist minister in both St. Paul and Chicago.

John Bird's other obituary, published in the St. Louis Argus, is longer and somewhat more accurate, though still riddled with questionable facts. Here, my great-grandfather is a graduate of Gammon Theological Seminary and Yale University. As usual, neither Yale nor Gammon has any record of his having been a student there. This obituary, most likely written from information submitted by Lena or one of her children, neatly avoids any reference to John Bird's earlier life in Little Rock, Arkansas, in Oxford, Mississippi, or in Chicago. Instead the article simply states that John Bird Wilkins and Lena Murphy had been living in St. Louis since 1909. We know this to be untrue on several counts, not the least of which is that the U.S. census data confirm that Bird and his family were living in Drew County, Arkansas, in 1910. Not surprisingly, this obituary also fails to mention John Bird's relationship with Susie Douthit. However, the Argus article does mention each of John Bird's seventeen children by name, including my grandfather, “Atty J. Ernest Wilkins.”29

As John and I took one last look at Antioch Baptist Church, I imagined my great-grandfather's funeral cortege as it wound its way toward Washington Park Cemetery. Were there many cars? John Bird was at least eighty-seven when he died. Perhaps many of the people who had known him best had already passed on. Most likely Lena Murphy was there and, hopefully, many of their children. I would bet money, though, that my grandfather J. Ernest Wilkins did not attend.

The digital chime of my cell phone broke into my thoughts. It was Ethel Porter's grandson Chris Wright. We had been playing phone tag all day, trying to set up a time when we could get together. He had some old family pictures he wanted to show me. We made a date to meet in the lounge of my hotel the next night after he got off from work.

As John piloted our rental car away from the city, I permitted myself a small moment of silent relief. After traveling over a thousand miles and spending hundreds of dollars, my worst nightmare had been that I would leave St. Louis with nothing to show for my efforts. But now that I had a definite date set to meet Chris, I would at least have some new pictures to take home with me. Perhaps, if things worked out right, Chris Wright might even have a picture of my slave ancestor, Aunt Marjory's mighty mythical Jeremiah. Bit by bit, everything was beginning to fall into place.