- [Jim] Forget the interstates.

We check in on the traffic along the Mississippi flyway.

We hear a lot of talk about all of our issues but this truck is all about action.

- I think a lot of people want to heal and they want to start their process with healing.

They're just not sure where to start.

- [Jim] And this?

Not a "this could happen here" story.

It's a "this did happen here" story and could happen again.

- [Joe] And when we went out on the street, then we saw, it was like an air raid.

- [Jim] And the day 130 years ago, when thousands gathered in St. Louis to honor the passing of a civil war hero, the General that the union soldiers called uncle Billy.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(funky music plays) - I'm Jim Kirchherr, and it is a chilly morning here at the Audubon Center at Riverlands, across the Mississippi river from Alton.

Why here?

Well, frankly, I don't get out that much anymore.

And this is the perfect thing you can do outside.

Plenty of social distancing, and plenty to see if you like this sort of thing.

River lands is a stop on the North South bird migration route known as the Mississippi flyway.

Some birds can be found here all year round but others like trumpeter swans and pelicans are tied to the seasonal migrations.

We expected to see a lot of trumpeter swans this time of year, but only caught sight of a few.

Yeah, you If you come out, you recommend bringing some pretty good binoculars of some sorts - Yeah, so it's good, you're on a big landscape.

This is 3,700 acres out here and it's wide open.

And so birds are going to be a little more spread out.

And as you see, the water is, is just a big body of water.

- [Jim] In other years in this kind of weather, you could be in the Audubon center, building, sharing powerful scopes but the pandemic has the center closed except for small groups by reservation.

But director Ken Buchholz says the outside is open for business.

But people can still come up with their cars - Absolutely.

and drive around.

- Absolutely.

And on the weekends through mid February we have outdoor programming.

We have guided trail walks and this is all around our Eagle Sunday rafter Saturday program.

- [Jim] We didn't stay long.

It was really cold, but we considered the visit a success, because we did catch sight of the Bald Eagle.

We're going to be heading back back to the day to day realities of these days in our community and our country, there's a lot that needs to be done.

There's a lot of talk about that.

A lot of planning.

Brooke Butler's story though is about doing something.

- [Child] I'm going to build a school.

- [Amber] And how is this school gonna fix racism - [Child] For everybody to be treated fairly?

- [Amber] What does a fair school look like?

- [Child] Never been in one.

- [Amber] So that means you got to use your imagination huh?

- Imagination (Amber laughs) - [Amber] Honestly, the easiest conversations to have around race and racism are with children, because they haven't been molded yet in, by society, right?

So they're not pessimistic yet.

They're not.

I also think that they're not pointing the finger yet, right?

Like whose fault is it?

- [Brooke] It's not common to see the solutions for injustices be placed in the hands of children.

But Dr. Amber Johnson sees them as possibly the simplest key for solving these problems.

By literally placing the tools in their hands.

- Yes.

With the Justice Fleet, community members are engaged with tangible exhibits that foster healing of injustices through art, play and dialogue.

- [Amber] So what we do is we take highly interactive exhibits and you have to think of exhibits differently from you would like a museum exhibit.

It's an experience.

And we take them into neighborhoods and we have them engage in these different activities that are either rooted in art therapy, play therapy or horticulture therapy, some form of therapeutic activity.

And we have conversations that otherwise would be really difficult.

- [Brooke] Topics can range from economic injustices housing, security, abuse, equality and these difficult conversations are key to ensure our children are growing up with the tools they need to confront these issues.

- This little white person, just started shooting at me.

Like a random person - okay, for no reason.

- I think that's good cops come up, hey, you're innocent.

- [Amber] Right, so here here's some statistics.

One in 1000 kids get hit by a car.

But how often do we tell children look both ways before you cross the street.

That is a lesson that we are hammering into their heads from day one.

Imagine if we hammered bodily consent into their heads from day one, the way we do look both ways before you cross the street.

Because in reality, like one in four children are molested.

So, the way that we teach look both ways before you cross the street is the same way that we should be teaching children about bodily consent.

It's the same way we should be teaching them about racism and why racism shows up.

Same way we should be teaching about sexism and why sexism shows up.

- [Brooke] Starting the conversation is the first step, but how exactly does the Justice Fleet aim to fix the problems?

Let's start, for example, with the radical forgiveness exhibit.

the Justice Fleet defines radical forgiveness as the profound notion that don't have to live with injustice and that we have control over the way we perceive, understand, act and react in our world.

Participants in the radical forgiveness exhibit engage in an art activism project, where they share their own biases and seek forgiveness.

- [Amber] So no matter what we're talking about people need to heal from past traumas, from past traumas caused by systemic injustice and oppression, from community violence, from whatever it is.

Cause we can write as many policies as we want, but if we don't heal, those policies will reflect our trauma.

- [Brooke] And while kids are more eager to engage after seeing art supplies and toys these exhibits are meant for people of all ages - [Amber] Especially with radical forgiveness.

There's a lot of skepticism at first from lots of different ages.

And my favorite story was one older black man.

He was a really big guy and, and he was sitting down and he was like, I don't think this is going to work but I'm going to try and he's like.

I don't know what to talk about.

And then he just realized, I guess in his head, he was like people automatically assume I'm a bad person because I'm so big and I'm black.

And I feel like I'm always trying not to take up space to prove that I'm a good person.

And I'm always making myself smaller and quieter.

And then he started crying and then he painted his thing.

And then he said, I feel so much lighter.

And so I think for children, for adults, I think a lot of people want to heal and they want to start their process with healing.

They're just not sure where to start.

And I think we're a start for a lot of people.

- [Brooke] So it's not as simple as just painting a picture and suddenly feeling healed.

Dr. Johnson explains it's a fluid process, that involves understanding, recalling, feeling, healing and letting go.

But the healing process doesn't need to be complete to look toward the future.

With the radical imagination exhibit participants focus on creating a space for people to imagine, a just world where liberation and freedom from oppression are possible.

- [Amber] So, for instance, radical imagination.

We open up this box of toys.

We're telling people to start touching stuff and playing.

And adults are like, let me write my ideas down first.

Let's confer and decide what we want to build first.

So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Just do it.

Whereas children, they start immediately.

They don't worry about constraints cause they don't understand, like money's not an issue to a child.

But if you say here's a box of toys, how would you fix homelessness in St. Louis city, ideas fly.

Because there's nothing at stake.

There's nothing to lose in this moment.

We're just building ideas - [Brooke] And the work doesn't stop when the toys are put away.

As an associate professor at St. Louis university, Dr. Johnson is also a founding member of the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity.

The Institute is made up of faculty who is committed to research and community outreach for equality.

- [Amber] I see the Institute becoming sort of the epicenter of discursive change when there's great crisis, there's great opportunity for social change.

And we are in the middle of a crisis.

- [Brooke] By analyzing laws and policies, providing training and academic resources, the Institute's mission is to eliminate disparities and individual and community health.

And like the Justice Fleet, healing is a key component.

But aside from their academic work, Dr. Johnson is also a parent and enforces the importance of having these conversations about social justice early and often - Social injustice has happened faster than our language can keep up.

So even though I have a PhD in communication and I've been teaching social justice for 15 years now, I still mess up.

We're not always going to say the perfect or right thing.

We're not going to always have the perfect response.

We're not going to always have the perfect lesson.

But I think if our kids know that and they see us as human it's easier for them to accept their own mistakes.

And I think that's something that's really important to also understand, is there's no such thing as like doing it right, per se, you have to give yourself grace and compassion because in new reality as a parent, you're also learning.

- It was 130 years ago on February 21st of 1891, a train pulled into St. Louis to the old union Depot here in the Mill Creek yards.

The city was pretty much shut down that day.

People were dressed in mourning clothes.

Buildings were draped in black.

And there were thousands of civil war veterans, many in their old uniforms here to pay their last respects to the man they called, uncle Billy.

The body of General William Tecumseh Sherman was on that train coming to be buried at Calvary cemetery.

He had died in New York at the age of 71, but St. Louis was his adopted home.

Even if he kept being pulled away.

After the civil war, he was back in St. Louis to command the US army west of the Mississippi.

And friends helped him buy this imposing home which is now gone.

Sherman and his wife bought a family plot in Calvary cemetery.

For Sherman's funeral, the newspapers devoted pages of coverage to the events.

The prominent guests who came to honor the man, who along with Lincoln and Grant, was considered one of the great heroes of the civil war.

His casket was on a case on pulled by four black horses.

It was followed by dignitaries and veterans marching behind, even some confederate veterans.

Crowds lined the streets to Calvary cemetery.

Sherman was not a religious man but his wife was a devout Catholic.

One of their sons became a priest and conducted the graveside services.

His civil war tactics, the march to the sea, They helped win the war and they continued to be debated today.

But 130 years ago, St. Louis said farewell to General Sherman.

The Post Dispatch said 10,000 people were here and called it the greatest funeral pageant ever seen in the West.

Sherman is still remembered today on a much smaller scale.

From our archives, Ruth Ezell's story on St. Louis's Sherman day.

(band music plays) - Right face.

Forward march.

(footstep sounds) (gunshot sounds) - [Ruth] Were it not for the muskets firing, it might seem like a normal afternoon in Calvary cemetery.

But today is Sherman day.

And these soldiers are actually members of the national organization, Sons of Union veterans.

The group is dedicated to preserving the history of soldiers, who fought to preserve the union during the civil war.

- [Jack] Our organization realized that many of our ancestors fought under General Sherman.

We called him uncle Billy, and we have formed a Sons of Union veterans camp here called the William T. Sherman.

Billy ain't camp 65.

(fiddle music plays) - [Ruth] General William Tecumseh Sherman is perhaps best known for a military strategy that contributed to the surrender of the Southern Confederacy.

He spent time in St. Louis off and on during his military career, and worked for a brief period as president of St. Louis railway, a streetcar company.

After his retirement from the army, General Sherman and his wife Ellen planned to live out their remaining years in St. Louis at their home on Garrison Avenue.

Sherman bought burial plots for his wife and children in Calvary cemetery.

His final request before his death in 1891 was to be buried alongside them.

- [Jack] We found that the grave site was here and it needed a little bit in the ring.

We came over and we painted the flag pole and trimmed some bushes and the cemetery noticed we were doing that.

And they were very, very cooperative.

- [Ruth] Lieutenant Colonel Jack Grothe has overseen the Sherman day ceremony for the past 31 years.

- Thanks guys for coming out again, we have- - [Ruth] His group, the Billy Yank Camp, is one of several hundred community-based divisions of the Sons of Union veterans, responsible for maintaining grave sites, and organizing events, like the Sherman day commemoration.

- We have Doug Niemeyer from the- - [Jack] Actually I've seen buses of school children coming to see Sherman's grave.

So, that's why we honor him.

(footstep sounds) - Civil war veterans groups have been in existence since the early 20th century.

As the veterans ranks began to dwindle, their descendants carried on the operations to preserve their stories for future generations In light of the 2011 sesquicentennial of the civil war, the role of these groups and re enactors is even more important in raising awareness of Missouri's role in the conflict.

- We keep alive the memory of the boys in blue.

We are Mr. Lincoln's army incarnate.

(footstep sounds) - I think the children nowadays need to know, you know what all these men did for us.

- [Angie] And they tend to appreciate it more when they see it live in front of them, rather than sitting in the classroom it's a lot more live for them and they become more involved with it.

- It's just, tremendous how much history there is here.

And people just, - Don't realize, - don't realize it.

They walked right over it.

- You been all right?

No?

Well you look marvelous.

- [Ruth] Despite the camp solemn responsibility to honor the history of the civil war veterans, they still have fun dressing up in uniforms and firing cannons.

(canon firing sound) - Well, you know, the old expression about boys and their toys or hobbies.

(band music plays) (Jack talks indistinctly) - There's some Confederate reenactors here today.

You're on your way to Minnesota to fight the shooter.

- I'm getting might be shot.

Everybody talking about shooting me.

- [Ruth] So I couldn't help, but noticing that you're slightly outnumbered here today, is that?

- That's, that's a fact that we've gotten used to.

We can't have the enemy without having the good guys.

- [Ruth] These Confederate reenactors are not as out of place as they seem.

History recalls that Confederate General Joseph Johnston, who led the resistance to Sherman's troops in the South, was actually one of the pallbearers at Sherman's funeral.

- [Jack] He had been a friend of Sherman's before the war and after the war.

And that's how respected he was.

(reenactors talking) - [Ruth] Sherman famously said war is hell.

But on Sherman day, war ends with smiles and photo ops before loading the Canon back into the truck and driving home.

- Oh, okay.

Hang on - Okay.

- Hang on.

There we go - And now for our weather segment, although this is about the winter of 1959, in February of that year, a tornado ripped through the heart of the city.

We didn't have the weather forecasting technology that we do today and it came with little warning.

There were sirens but back then that's not what sirens were for.

It was about 2:00 AM early morning, February 10th, 1959.

This is not actual film of the tornado, but this is film of the damage it caused.

21 people were killed.

Hundreds were injured along its path.

It started in the County near the Merrimack river.

Moved up Manchester road.

There was damage.

Heavy rains brought flooding.

The tornado kept moving Northeast into the city.

At Hampton in Oakland, Channel two's tower came crashing down on an apartment building.

It knocked down one of the decorative towers at the arena and put a gaping hole in its roof.

It then moved into the heart of the city.

At Olive and Boyle, Gaslight square, St. Louis Cardinal, Joe Cunningham was still awake in his apartment.

- And then all of a sudden it's two o'clock and 2:04, the tornado came through our apartment.

And I, honestly I saw the wall crack.

Pane cracked and that's when I dove back into that room, scared, completely scared.

When we finally got dressed, and went down the stairway, you know there was a lot of of rocks and glass and everything there.

And when we went out on the street, then we saw it was like an air raid.

- [Jim] Whether they were in its path or not, St. Louisians are likely to remember the 1959 tornado.

- Yeah.

That's one of my earlier memories happens that it took place right on my brother's 16th birthday.

It was going to be a big deal.

He was going to go to Allen's and get his driver's license.

My dad was going to take off work early.

Wakes up on that morning of February 10th.

And they had to tell him, we can't go.

There's, all the city is closed.

- [Jim] Dr. Jack Fishman grew up to become a professor of meteorology at St. Louis university.

- Anyway, that's what I remember about it as a, as a nine year old at that time, yes.

- So it's a 2:00 AM, middle of winter, tornado.

Is that unusual?

It's extremely unusual.

Primarily because when you see the outbreak of severe weather you need a lot of intense heat to be forming.

And you need a really moist atmosphere.

In the winter time in February, it's not that moist.

And obviously there's not a whole lot of heat.

- [Jim] Just two days before the tornado.

The afternoon Post Dispatch reported that the weather Bureau was uncertain about the coming storm.

Warm and cold fronts were colliding and forecasters were predicting that the cold front would dominate, possibly bringing sleet, freezing rain or snow, but they admitted that forecasting the next two days was difficult.

The next day, less than 24 hours before the tornado the warm front was winning.

The temperature was climbing into the sixties, heavy fog shut down the airport.

Now ,the winter weather was acting more like spring.

- [Announcer] Piecing together, all this information The staff prepares a detailed analysis of areas in which violent squall lines, hail storms and other dangerous weather conditions are likely to occur.

Where a tornado may develop.

- [Dr. Fisherman] But no, they were totally caught off.

We didn't have the technology back in those days to really, be able to forecast these sort of storms and especially at such an unusual hour.

- [Jim] From our archives, here's part of an interview with the man who was St. Louis's chief meteorologist in 1959.

- [George] It was determined that the tornado actually developed, just as it, as it got into the St Louis area.

So the population could not be advised in advance.

- [Jim] This wasn't St Louis's first or worst tornado, the 1896 cyclone, they called it, killed hundreds of people on both sides of the river.

The 1927 tornado hit about one o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in September.

Five girls were killed at Central High School.

Back then they knew so little about tornadoes.

They were so powerful, so unpredictable, that the US weather service actually discouraged the use of the term tornado in its forecasts, because it might cause panic.

It wasn't until 1948, that two air force meteorologists at Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma, Captains Miller and Farbush accurately predicted a tornado based on atmospheric conditions.

It was a first.

Their techniques were applied leading to the ability to issue earlier storm watches and warnings.

In 1959 there were still no weather satellites orbiting the earth, no advanced computer models for forecasting but they were starting to use radar.

- [George] Yeah, at that time had just installed shortly before this one of the first radar used for weather.

It was a modified radar that we obtained from the military and it had been rehabbed so that we could use it for spotting weather (wind howling) - His brother, Mr. Paul.

Tornado about a mile east of Went Popping station.

- A mile east of Wind Froming station.

- [Jim] Information was spread by telephone, and fax machines.

And when needed, the warnings went out on radio and TV stations.

- We interrupt this newscast to bring you this severe weather forecast issued by the United States weather Bureau.

- [Jim] Just as big cities were equipped with radar initially for defense purposes, there were also sirens but they were not for weather warnings.

This was the cold war.

Kits in the 1950s didn't do tornado drills.

They were doing air raid drills.

That was still a bigger concern than severe weather.

- [Dr. Fisherman] Sort of funny you have to think back to the 1950s and the big Russian scare and everything.

And remember when, only about, what, 10 15 years removed from the second world war.

So the use of sirens was going to be used in used primarily for warning of the Russian missiles that come in.

- [Jim] But immediately after the St Louis tornado of 1959 60 years ago, there was talk about using air raid sirens for tornado warnings.

But St. Louis's civil defense director Francis Hardaway, advised mayor Tucker that that would cause confusion and that the city should stick to using radio and TV for weather warnings.

But many said the siren should simply mean take cover.

- [Announcer] Families took shelter in the southwest corner of their home.

- [Jim] And some area communities began moving towards using sirens.

But as is often the case in this metropolitan area, there were disagreements and delays.

And a region wide coordinated weather warning system using sirens, was not implemented until 1967, eight years after the tornado.

1959, that's 60 years.

When it comes to technology that is a long time ago.

We now have satellites, doppler radars, powerful computers.

The human element is still important.

There is a science and an art doing all of this, but for all we have tornadoes remain one of weather fore casting's toughest challenges.

You can't necessarily say when it's going to touch down or how long it's going to travel or the direction of my travel.

- No, no.

I mean, they're trying to deal with hurricanes.

That's a bigger animal and you can follow that for much larger period of time.

And they're getting pretty good at that.

But, I don't think the tornado forecasting community is quite to that extent.

The other challenge is getting the information out to the public, okay.

And you don't want to over produce warnings, and you get criticized for crying wolf too often.

And maybe that's the real challenge.

We know that the circulation is there.

We know there's a conditions are right.

A lot of times the forecast is right on.

But you don't quite get a tornado.

You get an upper level funnel cloud.

(piano music plays) - And that's living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

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

- [Narrator] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan charitable foundation, and by the members of nine PBS (upbeat music plays)