- Empty theaters and concert halls, didn't just disappoint ticket holders, it put a lot of people who work behind the scenes out of work, but there were those who stepped up to give a hand to the stagehands.

- So many people locally and nationally offered to participate.

- Missouri came into the union 200 years ago, looking like this.

So, how did it end up looking like this?

- The leaders for the Native American tribe, they were not in a good position to negotiate.

- With another pandemic era graduation upon us, we look at the evolution of this rite of passage that was once only for a select few.

- In 1890, only about 7% of the US population is even enrolled in high school.

- It's all next on Living St. Louis (upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr.

Have you ever been to a theater or a concert venue when they're getting ready for the show?

Lights are being adjusted, microphones tested, equipment being moved around.

It takes a lot of people to make that happen.

When the pandemic hit, a lot of people lost a lot of work and they needed help.

Brooke Butler, on how one response to that was, let's put on a show.

- [Brooke] It's a sad and almost eerie feeling to see the empty stages that hold a place in so many St. Louisian's memories.

What we wouldn't give now, just to fight for a parking spot, push through a crowded venue, and wait an hour in line for a $12 beer.

We miss the entertainment, the community, the production of it all, but so much of what we miss is largely due not to the celebrities, but the people working behind the scenes.

- This town is truck full of a lot of live entertainment that suddenly disappeared.

- [Brooke] Ron Stevens with the St. Louis classic rock preservation society, who regularly advocates for the people working behind the scenes, saw the need to provide extra support when live entertainment came to a halt during the pandemic.

- When you think about it, when you're sitting at a show like here at Riverport, there are 200 people who are working that night, who were being paid to be here to make your evening very memorable and fun and they're not working right now.

(shouts) (upbeat rock music) - And so, in place of their annual fundraiser, the St. Louis classic rock preservation society created Keep Live Alive St. Louis.

A 90-minute program about the people who have kept live entertainment thriving in our community.

(upbeat rock music) - [Ron] We started with the idea of as simple half hour video that would be free to watch, and that half hour soon became 90 minutes because so many people locally and nationally offered to participate.

This particular shows, Keep Live Alive St. Louis is not a live virtual concert or a taped virtual concert.

There is music in it, but we wanted to present something that had more entertainment value beyond just artists performing.

- Ah, look at this at the checker dome this Friday night, three great acts.

- Who's on first?

- Yes.

- No, who?

- Yes.

- Who?

- Yes.

- Who's on first?

- No, who's on second.

- In addition to some musical funny comedy, Keep Live Alive has some big name guest stars, including Kevin Cronin, from REO Speed Wagon, Pat and Danny Liston from Mama's Pride, local musicians like Roland Johnson, St. Louis radio and entertainment personalities, and Sammy Hagar, a big fan of St. Louis, even donated an autographed guitar that was auctioned off for the cause.

A lot of those featured in the program share their memories of events that have shaped St. Louis as a city, and of course but the main purpose of supporting the crew you'll hear directly from local stagehands.

Cat Mues has worked for the local 6 stagehand unions for about 10 years.

- We are the little people.

We're the invisible ones who run around and make everything you know, plug everything in and unplug it or whatever we have to do, you know, to make it cool.

So, it's better than seeing a show.

It's kind of like when you go party in the green room, you don't want to come out, 'cause it's one big party back there and you work with all these people who have the same, they have the same interest, they have the same love of music.

- Well, Cat says there isn't necessarily a typical event.

She describes the various jobs of a stagehand and it doesn't sound like what the average person would describe as a party.

It starts when the bands pull up with 15 to 20 53 foot trailers worth of equipment.

When Taylor Swift played in St. Louis, she had 98 trailers, three just for wardrobe alone.

- Like she had this giant piano, it was a big camera, and we had to bring it out of the street and it took, I don't know, 10 20 of us just to guide it down the alley, up the ramp through the door and into the arena.

It was insane.

- The stage hence then distribute all the equipment around the venue, whether it's the band's instruments, audio and lighting equipment, stage decoration and props.

They make sure that all of the equipment runs smoothly throughout the performance, and then at the end of the night, they load everything back up.

- I've done all of it, done.

The only I haven't done is rigging and rigging are the guys who are hanging from the wrappers.

You see them, they climb up all the way to the top.

They're the ones that put the lights.

They run the motors, the light walls or curtains, or whatever's back there.

So they won't let women do it because we don't have the upper body strength.

You've really got to have it.

I beg, I beg, I promise.

(laughs) - Over the past year, many stagehands have had to find other sources of income.

Cat went back to working as a paralegal but she hopes to return to full-time stagehand work soon.

- Have you seen a lot of people completely change jobs because they have to.

And, do you expect there to be a shortage of stage hands?

- Oh, no 'cause once it starts out, no, we love this job way too much.

We do the craziest things just to work.

I think that Keep Live Alive, the whole idea, the whole thing should keep going no matter what pandemic or not just because people don't get it, and it just makes it a more they're appreciate the job more, they appreciate maybe when they do go to a concert, it's not just all smoke and mirrors.

There are real life people out there doing this for a living and doing it 'cause we love it.

- But, as much of a passion they may have for the job, those working in live entertainment still need to pay the bills.

- If someone might be working three or four nights a month and that's it, and that's making their car payments, and now they can't make those car payments.

So if that sounds like you and you work in the live entertainment industry in St. Louis, the qualifications are loose and that we we want to give all the money out.

We want to give thousand dollars checks to every family or person who needs that money - Grants will be awarded in June, about the same time we can hopefully see a little bit more normalcy with live events, and maybe the next one you attend, you can think your local stagehand.

(guitar strumming) - In the live music, we'll return to St. Louis, baby.

I promise.

Whoa!

(guitar strumming) - 200 years ago, Missouri became a state, and I didn't realize until this bicentennial year that it entered the union in 1821 as the largest state in the country.

I also didn't realize that in 1821, it was not as big as it is today.

Take a look at the old maps showing Missouri, it's squared off in the Northwest quarter.

It's not a mistake that triangle of land that gives it the shape we know today did not become part of Missouri until 1837.

The original Western border was a straight line North and South, leaving off what was called the plant region.

- There was a big push when you get west of Mississippi, many at that time, one of the Western States to have very square boundaries.

- Jason Combs is a Geography Professor at the University of Nebraska.

He's written about the annexation and don't feel bad if you'd never heard this story.

He hadn't either, and he grew up there.

- [Jason Combs] I'm from Ashton County, outside of Fairfax, little town, farming town Fairfax.

And I had never heard of the platte purchase.

I'd never heard of the platte region, and I think I was in graduate school until I, it was like, wow.

I mean, I didn't even know anything about it.

- The story is all about westward expansion into new States and territories and steadily pushing the native tribes further and further west.

It was always about the settlers wanting land and more land.

The Indian removal act of 1830 removed the Eastern tribes to West of the Mississippi.

This includes the infamous journey called "The trail of Tears."

A few months later, William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, now the superintendent of Indian affairs headed from St. Louis to what is now Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to get the tribes of the great lakes and the upper Mississippi to agree to move.

They were sent west beyond the state of Missouri and the Arkansas territory into land that included the platte region between Missouri's western border and the Missouri river.

- Sacks and foxes.

There were several bands of sou involved, the Omaha's, the Iowa's and Oto's and Missouri's.

- But like other treaties with the Indians this one would not hold.

The platte region was rich farmland along the Missouri river and with no natural border or barrier, white settlers just started moving in to the Indian territory.

For state officials, the solution was annexation but some in Washington had their doubts.

Why make the biggest state even bigger and a slave state at that?

- And so the annexation actually took free soil and made it slave territory.

There were some who contested that in Congress but eventually they recognized it wasn't going to upset the balance of power in the Senate, so it did get approved.

- And William Clark headed up the Missouri river to once again remove tribes this time from land they'd been given just a few years before.

It was Clark's last treaty.

He died the following year at the age of 68.

The Platte region became part of Missouri in 1837 and it immediately started filling up with sutlers.

- And in 1850, the census in 1850 had 41,092 pioneers, and so that just kind of gives you an idea of forty plus thousand people had swarmed into that, the platte region, basically in a decade.

So, there was obviously a huge demand for that territory.

- It's called the platte purchase because in exchange for the land the tribes received money, supplies, farm implements, even a blacksmith, but the US government set the terms and things rarely worked out well for the tribes.

- Some of the, the leaders for the Native American tribes.

I mean, they clearly say, I mean, you know they were starving.

The populations had just been decimated by disease.

So, they were not in a good position to negotiate.

- That platte annexation made the state of Missouri even bigger but no longer the biggest.

That year, Michigan with its boundaries, including parts of the great lakes was admitted to the union as the largest state.

It is said we are currently living in the midst of a third black Renaissance.

The first was in the 1920s, the so-called Harlem Renaissance.

Our next story is about the second in the 1960s, the civil rights and black power era, and we don't have to go to Harlem for this story.

We recently ran a documentary about BAG.

BAG, the Black Artists' Group, a group of African-American musicians and artists here in the city.

Ruth Ezell recently caught up with the director and asked him why he thought it important to tell their story.

- This is just such an important story.

This is something that people need to know and being in St. Louis and seeing that I had access to some of the key players in the story, it was, I guess a little bit, it just seemed like it had to happen, you've got the Avenue here.

I start reaching out, start talking to people that were here during that period, that were part of the BAG organization, and let's just, since I have the gear let's get the camera rolling and let's see what we can do.

- Well, you must be a music lover or this would not have interested you.

- That's definitely what drew me in.

I was researching albums, and I came across a top 10 list, and they listed the Black Artists Group album.

The live in Paris album is one of the top ten experimental jazz albums of all time and seeing the St. Louis connection, and not being aware of the organization or the group, I was just instantly drawn in.

So, it started with the record, and then when I saw how much larger that story was, I just had to proceed.

- In the film that talks about how they couldn't get venues to perform in because people didn't understand what they were doing, and so they would just play anywhere.

- They would find ways to play whether is at forest park, or a few small venues around that would allow them to play, but I think what's really cool, they're also is.

If you look at how they ended up opening the headquarters on 2665 Washington Avenue, that became not only a venue where they could kind of say, Hey, you know we don't have to rely on the gatekeepers anymore.

We'll put on our own shows here, and maybe we'll open up the doors to people that wouldn't be able to get into a show somewhere else.

Not only were they doing that at that space but that did become the headquarters for their educational programming.

So, kids that were in the city that were interested in, in an art form, be it poetry, be it painting be it music, be it theater, make it come there and learn, and it also became a spot, where they would have these weekly forums that were political forums about what was going on, not only in the city but nationally and what could be done about it.

So I think, you know, again that it gets back to this kind of do for yourself.

If the venues don't exist or if the venues are closing their doors, you find your own doors, you create your own doors, and I think they did a great job of that.

- Were you aware that there were similar groups like BAG across the country?

Or was that something you discovered as you worked on your project?

- So I had heard of the national Black Arts Movement and I was definitely aware of that, but it's interesting that I had not heard of that.

I didn't know the history of the St. Louis chapter.

That was right here.

So yeah, I mean, that was another really, that was a driving force to kind of do this documentary.

I feel like St. Louis is notorious for kind of sweeping its history under the rug.

You know, we hear about the movements that go on in larger cities, whether they be in New York or in Chicago but unfortunately the St. Louis story is usually the one that gets looked over - And the St. Louis story for BAG, it was far more interdisciplinary than its counterparts in other cities.

- That's true.

I mean, they're kind of acknowledged as zany, truly multidisciplinary, a chapter of the Black Arts Movement, and so I think that that's unique and that makes it something that, it deserves some respect.

- I was amazed how many people you found who are still alive to talk about it?

- Yeah, well, a number of people had passed before we started and a number of people passed while we were filming, but it, it goes beyond the people that we got on camera.

The true BAG story, I think is one that we couldn't capture.

This isn't a historical comprehensive document of the organization, to really dig into the BAG story.

You see that there were so many artists that were involved that weren't mentioned here.

I mean, everybody truly had a different experience, a different story, a different idea of who the original members were.

I mean, it was kind of something that's kind of hard to categorize in a way, because it was just, it was, there were a core group of people that were living their lives in a way that attracted all of this creative energy, and attracted all of these people that were inspired to go on and do things not only artistically, but politically but you quickly see that, sometimes there's a disagreement about if somebody was a true member or not.

I mean, there were so many people kind of coming through the doors of the BAG headquarters on Washington Avenue that it's really kind of, it's hard to put into a regular documentary format.

It's hard to wrap your, put it all into a nice and tight box, I guess you could say.

- One of the things fascinated me and I had heard of the world of saxophone quartet, but I didn't realize that they were created as a result of BAG sort of indirectly.

- Yeah.

- And I mean, three of the key members at the time ended up forming the world saxophone quartet, and I think it was as you hear Oliver Lake say in the documentary, he kind of took the lessons that he had learned from BAG to kind of start to create a path for himself in New York, and that's kind of what indirectly led to that, the formation of the world saxophone quartet.

- And I'm gonna give you credit for digging deep enough to find all that film.

- I wish we would've found more.

We did find a few people that were here in St. Louis that had documented, and then the boxes of documentation just sat in their basement, and so as we started to collect interviews, and kind of follow the leads that people would say, Hey, you know, check with this guy know he was at the show and he had a camera.

We luckily, we started to uncover this stuff, and the funny story is, is I've gotten a couple of emails after the documentary or the St. Louis film festival of some other possible leads, some other documents that might exist.

So, it's surprising because I think their bag was really prolific at the time.

I mean, they were doing shows weekly.

There's so much that wasn't documented but I do hope that even as this airs and as we kind of say, maybe this chapter, this part of the documentary might be complete.

We find more and we're able to kind of like supplement this, this document with more archival footage, and more things that haven't been seen by the public.

- So, we can see an update then.

- I hope so.

- (mumbles) I hope so.

- Area school districts are once again making their pandemic era high school graduation plans, loosening things up a bit, perhaps with social distancing and masks, moving things outside, virtual options, even driving graduations.

Last year, when so many kids were missing out on the ceremonies, they were looking forward to caravan, and go took a look at how and why high school graduation got to be such a big deal.

(instrumental music) - The night that I graduated from high school, I remember looking around the familiar gymnasium, at the familiar faces, and realizing that these would no longer be a part of my daily life.

And with that diploma in hand, I wasn't a senior anymore.

For me, high school was over, and that night, it was a chance to say goodbye to all that had been familiar for the past four years.

But for the seniors of 2020, COVID-19 shutdowns brought an abrupt ending to their high school experience.

Though classes resumed online, for many, there was no final sporting event, no prom, no last day, roaming the halls as a student, and perhaps most disappointing, no traditional graduation ceremony.

I reached out to Dr. Laura Westhoff, Chair of history at UMSL, to give some context as to how and why high school as we understand it today, became such a defining experience for American teens.

- [Dr. Laura Westhoff] In 1890, only about 7% of the us population is even enrolled in high school.

It isn't until 1940, that 50% of Americans graduate from high school.

So, those years are really formative years where we're learning and laying the foundation of these rituals, this cultural practice, where the school is becoming the center of adolescents experience, and that the majority of Americans begin to share this.

- Although, high schools in the United States had started to emerge soon after the civil war, they were mostly reserved for the wealthy and college bound.

For those less fortunate, education and their youth ended.

As soon as they were able to get a job to help support their families.

But the rise of a child study movement in the late 1800's began to look closely at the development of young people between the ages of ten and eighteen, and define it as its own phase of life before adulthood.

- We just can't underestimate the importance of this notion of adolescents, Educational Psychologists, G. Stanley Hall, who's known as the father of adolescents argued that those teenage years they needed to be in a place where adults were helping them grow and develop.

Along with that was a strong labor movement, effort unions and women's reformers working together to require children to go to school.

- But secondary education wasn't just providing formative support in this newly identified phase of life.

The absence of schooling in the lives of many children was producing adults with a limited skill sets.

As the United States began to see a rise in white collar jobs and rapid innovations in technology, it became clear that it needed to invest in an educated workforce.

- The federal government begins with a law in 1916 to support, encourage vocational education within high schools.

- As the curriculum expanded, past college prepped to include courses like civics and home economics, as well as offer a variety of sports, clubs, and activities.

It focused on preparing students not just for life as an adult, but for life as a US citizen.

- So you see, sort of leaders in education like John Dewey, talking about the school as a social center and curriculum in the turn of the century to be accessible to all children.

So, this idea that schools are public spaces and they help make American culture.

They're drawing in the whole community, parent community, that neighborhood, and that entirely shifts the nature of high school from a privilege experience for elite children who are on a college preparatory path to a comprehensive high school experience for all American youth.

- And as the decades went by, the completion of these four years became more of an expectation than of privilege.

- Graduation is kind of the culmination of this idea of high school as a transition moment in a person's life.

- It's one of the first formal things that a lot of these kids are gonna go.

I mean, their speeches, you march to the podium, and you would shake with one hand and accepted the other.

- Yes, it is.

It is.

And so that's all part of that transition to adulthood.

The expectations of that formal behavior.

- What's have been like for you, kind of witnessing this time in history with high school being, the year being truncated?

- It is so fascinating, and as a historian, I do think a lot of have this.

So much of the high school experience for so many kids, is a physic called sort of spatial experience.

Like, my son is an athlete, and as I imagine him going into his senior year possibly not playing his sports, I both curious and mourning some loss about that.

I'm not sure how he, or the rest of us will think of him as a high school student.

He's doing his work online, but he's so much more than his academic work.

The school is a place where the fullness of who we are, has opportunities to grow and develop.

- And as schools and students adapt for less than traditional commencements this year, whether it's drive thru, drive in, or completely online, the loss of a communal ceremony and celebration might be just as disappointing for the graduate's loved ones were personally experienced this rite of passage as it is for the seniors themselves.

- All of us who have been through that graduation experience, I think we're all missing that, because it is so deeply part of our cultural practice in a country where public education is a key component.

- But these times prove that the bond built between high schools, the neighborhoods, and communities they serve, is just as strong as it was a century ago.

- This truly is a moment in history that we have no precedent for, and we know it's changing the ways that we can do this very deeply important cultural rituals.

I see a lot of innovation, a lot of effort to find new ways to do them.

- Celebrated by parades, signs, front porch gatherings, (beep honking) and lots of horn honking.

The seniors of 2020 might just end up having the most memorable graduation experience of us all.

- And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kirchherr and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation, Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan, Charitable Trust, and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues)