- [Kirchherr] It was a St. Louis animation studio that brought to life the Oscar-winning short "Hair Love".

Why the founders say this and upcoming work is so important.

- Only then are we gonna really get better outcomes and understanding of one another?

- [Kirchherr] What was once simply a letter home is now a small piece of American history.

The writer and the effort to make sure her words would survive.

And the story of a nun and a rabbi.

Two St. Louisans whose paths crossed in a place called Selma.

- [Kirchherr] Because the time was exactly right.

But to change history.

- [Kirchherr] It's all next on Living St. Louis.

(gentle music) - I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we don't usually start our program with a story from our archives, but on this day, this week, this time, it seems appropriate to tell it again.

It's a story about race relations, about voting rights, and about personal courage.

It's about two people who are no longer with us, but what they did and why they did it should not be forgotten.

(gentle music) - [Patrick] 1965 was a critical year for the American civil rights movement.

It had become clear that the old south would not grant equal rights to its black citizens without a fight.

That spring the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Selma, Alabama to the state Capitol of Montgomery in support of voting rights.

On March 7th, some 600 civil rights marchers were brutally attacked by state and local law men in Selma where more than 100 were injured on the day that would become known as bloody Sunday.

Reverend King called upon religious leaders throughout the nation to come to Selma and show their support.

On March 10th, a group of 54 St. Louisans including rabbis, ministers, priests, some laypeople and six nuns flew to Selma, Alabama to march for civil rights.

- [Mary] Sister Eugenry, who was the administrator and the superior of the house called me and ask if how I would like to go to Selma the next day.

And she said, are you still there?

And I said, are you kidding?

And she said, no.

And I said, I don't wanna go down there and be a martyr for anybody just to get them a right to vote.

But I knew that it was a matter of put up or shut up.

We complain about so many things, but we don't really take a stance that says I'm willing to go the whole mile for this.

And I knew it was important for me as a black woman, for the rest of my people to have that right to be self-determining.

Once I had said yes to her while we watched the 10 o'clock news that night, a Reverend Marvin Reeb was beat to death on the streets of Selma.

And I'm saying to myself, are you crazy?

And I decided, yeah, I guess I'm crazy.

- [Patrick] The few hundred marchers from St. Louis and other cities would not succeed that day in completing the trek to Montgomery, that would come later.

But the impact of religious folk, and especially nuns putting their lives on the line for voting rights made an impression far beyond the streets of Selma.

- [Bernard] This was indeed one of the first times that we talked into television and talked into radio and the whole country just listening to what was happening.

There were a few hundred people there.

As a matter of fact, I've often thought back to this that just the few people were able at that juncture at that particular juncture because the time was exactly right to change history.

- [Patrick] The marchers were stopped within blocks without incident, but the possibility of violence was real which raised an important question at the time.

- How do we act if we get stopped in this march by the police authorities?

Reverend King had been preaching a non-violent resistance and we were being instructed by a number of people as to the meaning of non-violence.

This was incidentally right at the beginning of the black power movement too because there were a number of young Turks present who said we should not behave this way.

If they beat us, we have to beat them back.

But the consensus at the end of that meeting was if we are attacked, we are not to respond in kind.

So that was the substance of that meeting.

And then the question became what to do with these six nuns.

Supposing these six nuns were attacked.

And I remember vividly that we were assigned many of us a nun and our job was if were we were attacked at that time to push them to the ground to cover them with our bodies and to absorb the blows that would be rained upon them.

- [Patrick] When Selma mayor Joe Smitherman confronted the marchers, a local minister called upon sister Ebo to challenge him.

- Reverend Anderson started about mayor Smitherman and we have someone of our own who is going to address you.

And I thought he isn't doing that.

He doesn't have the name right.

He introduced me in front of the cops, and all these different policies and so forth.

And I really actually recalled from Jeremiah where God's spirit said, "Don't worry about what you're going to say in times like these."

And I actually said a prayer, "Lord, you better come through now 'cause I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

And it worked out fine.

I didn't make that much of a speech, but the words went all over the world.

- [Patrick] Sister Ebo, rabbi Lipnick and the rest of their party returned to St. Louis that evening.

But with the attention of the world on Selma, Reverend King got the legal permission he needed to march to the Capitol.

On Sunday, March 21st, over 3,000 marchers began a five day walk to Montgomery, sleeping in fields alongside the road.

When they arrived, they were 25,000 strong.

Five months later, president Johnson signed the voting rights act of 1965.

It was only the beginning.

- [Mary] People didn't pay attention until it was these six little sisters that walked on the stage.

And there were all kinds of women that really then began to misbehave in a paternalistic society.

And so I'm 81 now, and I'm still trying to misbehave.

- [Patrick] 25 years later, sister Ebo and rabbi Lipnick met again at a civil rights rally in St. Louis.

- I ended up on the step standing next to this white guy.

And then he pointed to me, and I was over on that side of him.

And he said, and I know this young lady, and I'm thinking to myself I've never seen this guy before in my life.

(both laugh) And he said his name was rabbi Lipnick.

And that is, I think I have a picture of that where I'm standing there.

When he said his name, I had prayed for him for 40 years almost.

I didn't know him.

I went praying for his conversion.

I just want him to be a good rabbi.

If you're gonna be a rabbi, be a good one.

- I don't know that you prayed hard enough.

(both laugh) - Well, God let us get back together again.

And it's been just marvelous.

- There's an old saying that when an old person dies, a library burns because their wisdom, their knowledge, their experiences go with them.

Well, we have another story about preserving that kind of history.

Ruth Ellz tells us the story of a St. Louis woman, a world war II veteran who made sure that her story would survive with the help of the State Historical Society.

- [Phyllis] March 9th, 1944, "Dear family, all of us apprentice seaman are billeted in North Hampton hotel and midshipmen are living in the dormitories on Smith campus."

- [Ezell] It was the first of many letters written by Jean Schwarting to loved ones in St. Louis and Mexico, Missouri during World War II.

Schwarting was among tens of thousands of American women who enlisted in a newly created division of the Navy known as WAVES, Women Accepted For Volunteer Emergency Service.

The influx of female personnel freed up men for duty at sea.

- [Phyllis] She turned 21 and graduated from college and enlisted in the Navy all in like January of 1944.

- [Ezell] Jean Schwarting's daughter, Phyllis Carlyle, explains why her mother signed up.

- She was in a family with three daughters.

And so there weren't any sons to join the war efforts.

And she came from a fairly patriotic, stoic German family.

And her father served in World War I, but it was that patriotism I think that was evident at the time.

- [Ezell] Schwarting wrote home daily, for two reasons: - [Phyllis] She was not allowed to keep a diary.

So she wrote the letters to maintain a connection to her family and also create her diary.

Some of the letters even mentioned, "Put these pictures I send you in a drawer and save them for me when I get home."

- Jean Schwarting's World War II letters now have a permanent home here at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia.

They're part of a digital collection that includes letters from more than 3,000 enlisted men and women from across the country.

- [Ezell] Archivist, Heather Richmond.

- They can search just any key word they want to.

And then we also have ways we have metadata which makes it so that you could click on a state, and every letter from that state shows up.

- The thing about researching an interesting topic or a compelling person, is that the more you learn, the deeper you wanna dig.

That was certainly the case with Jean Schwarting.

She and her twin sister June spent the first nine years of their lives living here in south St. Louis on the 4,900 block of botanical.

They and their immediate family, lived above a grocery store owned by the girls and an uncle who helped to raise them.

That's because Jean and June's mother died shortly after they were born.

- [Ezell] Their father, Henry Schwarting was an engineer.

He eventually remarried and fathered a third daughter, Mickey.

The girls spent summers in Mexico, Missouri where their aunt and uncle had moved and owned a farm.

Jean and her twin went on to graduate from Southwest High School, then enrolled at Washington University where they were when the US entered the World War II.

- [Phyllis] And she was in college and she decided that she was going to enlist.

And the recruiter talked her into waiting until she graduated from college so that she could become an officer.

- [Ezell] Schwarting graduated with a degree in business and accounting and joined other WAVE recruits at Smith college in North Hampton, Massachusetts where they trained at officer candidate school.

- You take all these girls that are college girls and not college girls and you have to teach them how to become soldiers even though they didn't serve on the front.

And she actually said she enjoyed living in the dormitories because when she went to Washington University, she lived at home and commuted to school.

- [Ezell] Schwarting's day to day activities and observations of fellow WAVES were the primary focus of her letters home.

- [Phyllis] "It's still snowing.

The people here in the hotel say that this is a freak snow storm.

It's very pretty, and it makes it really seem like New England.

As we marched to class, we can see a ski run on one of the hills near here.

Beth got a box of cookies from her mother today, and all the girls on the deck keep dropping in to see how the cookie situation is.

The situation is well in hand.

Write soon, love Jean."

- [Ezell] She'd also make requests for things that weren't easy to come by in war time.

- [Phyllis] "Please save a shoe stamp for me for when I come home in May.

I want to get some pumps for dress, but the Navy doesn't give a shoe stamp for them.

They aren't essential say the regulations, but if you could see me in my GI shoes and stockings, you'd know that pumps are necessary for morale."

- [Ezell] Also necessary for morale going on leave.

- "Beth and I say that when we go home on leave we're going to take half-hour baths, talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, eat off plates, we'll ride in a car because we always walk here and sleep as long as we want to.

These are the things we miss most, and we're going to be light for everything."

- [Ezell] After Schwarting's basic training, she was assigned to communications for additional instruction.

Then it was on to Washington DC where Ensign Schwarting coded and decoded messages, and also delivered messages between the department of the Navy and the White House.

- She didn't tell us much about what she did because it was so top secret.

And I don't remember her talking hardly at all about her actual job until, oh, just a few years ago.

- [Ezell] After the war was won in Europe in 1945, the Supreme commander of allied forces, Dwight D Eisenhower returned the victorious to the nation's Capitol.

Schwarting wrote home about his rousing welcome.

- [Phyllis] "It wasn't really a parade, just a welcome to the general.

There was just a police escort, then the general and then about a dozen army cars and various admirals, generals and enlisted men in them.

But it was the general who stole the show.

He is wonderful."

- [Ezell] In June of 1946, Lieutenant junior grade Jean Schwarting was honorably discharged and returned to Missouri and civilian life for good.

Over the next several decades, Schwarting was married and widowed twice, raised three children and taught third grade.

During the final chapter of her life, she gave presentations throughout the community about her military service.

- [Phyllis] The student decided to write a paper on mom's experiences.

And I think she had copies of the letters and so forth.

Well, her professor at Truman State University saw these letters and said, Oh these should be preserved.

This is a really good record.

You know, first person of World War II.

- [Ezell] Jean was put in touch with the State Historical Society of Missouri and the rest, as they say, is history.

- You can see this human experience happening, just makes it very real.

And that's what I love about these letters.

- [Ezell] Jean Schwarting Mollet Anderson died June 6, 2019.

The 75th anniversary of D-Day.

She was 96 years old.

To her legacy, add this video interview with Jean's granddaughter-in-law Robin Carlyle taped the year before Jean's death.

- [Robin] Did you ever tell your students about your time in the war?

- I don't think so.

I don't think, you know, they were so little, it didn't mean a thing and even their parents if they had been in it, they never talked about it.

- [Ezell] But because of all she has left behind, Jean Schwarting is able to tell them now.

(gentle music) - When I was a kid growing up in post-war America, baby boomer, the kids on TV pretty much looked like me.

They were white kids.

They were growing up in a white world.

Well, adding diversity in the media for a long time has been a work in progress.

We have a couple of stories about how that's changing, changing what we see and what we talk about.

- [Announcer] All right, here we go.

- [Ezell] The Academy award-winning animated short "Hair Love" touched hearts across the country with the story of an African-American dad trying to style his daughter's hair for the first time.

It was produced by St. Louis-based Lion Forge animation which weaves diverse tales told by diverse creators.

The studios projects are much more inclusive compared to what was consumed by the founders of Lion Forge, David Steward II and Carl Reed, when they were kids in the 1980s.

- There were a couple of shows that were already out there.

You had different strokes, you had what's happening, those sorts of things, and of course, you know, in late 80s, you had things like the Cosby show, which was kind of like that real moment of kind of changing kind of what the narrative had been in the past.

So while we had shows on the air where we're always have depicted as poor or living in the projects those sorts of things, but you never until that point really saw a fluent African-Americans.

- There's an old saying that, all of the stories have been told, and there's only a certain number of stories and they're told over and over.

The key and the difference is their perspective, and where as some people see it as a risk, we see it as an advantage or a benefit to the content.

And what makes "Hair Love" unique, the fact that you have a dad with dreadlocks and tattoos and a mom, that's a natural hair blogger.

This is true culture right now.

- [Ezell] Lion Forge has a global footprint through a number of international production partnerships and through its broad cultural representation and comic books in animated films, Steward and Reed hope boys and girls not only identify with this new generation of work, but also better understand others who are not just like them.

- For us, diverse content isn't just for the diverse group that you're portraying, diverse content is for that group and for everybody else to be able to enjoy as well, because only then are we gonna really get better outcomes and an understanding of one another, better social norms as well.

- Our content should be both a window and a mirror for those that need to see themselves and for that representation, it should be a mirror, so you should look at that aspect and say, "Hey, I know that guy I know a guy like him.

I know this lady.

I can relate to this aspect of them."

- I knew you could do it.

- Okay, so he says, content should be a window and a mirror.

- Absolutely.

And we're seeing a number of media organizations respond to that.

And to be completely honest, it's somewhat opportunistic, right?

So we had "Black Panther" which showed that you could make money.

Although there were examples before, right?

And so companies and media companies are willing to take that risk.

And I think that's great for people to understand that it's not a risk to show different cultures, and skin tones and hair textures, and that those don't need to be siloed only to that population, that those can be universal stories.

But that again is going to take work because we didn't grow up with those options.

But the young people today are growing up with those options.

And hopefully we'll be able to see themselves in those films just like I was able to see myself in films even though it wasn't the same skin tone or hair texture.

So some people get frustrated that, Oh well this is, you know, it's that gets labeled like the diversity short or the diversity film.

It's like, well why can't you see the humanity in that story?

And so I think that's one great way in which race and skin tone and hair texture and those differences are being normalized as simply differences that we should appreciate and see as beautiful, right?

Not a threat or a problem.

But to also layer on that racism.

I'm also hearing different media companies think about well, how do we respond to that?

What do we do to speak to racism for kids?

And some of the conversations, there are simple things like you know, in many of the kids' movies you see the police officer as the helper.

They're the helper or the person that everyone goes to.

Well, the conversation around police violence has made people realize, Oh, wait, not every community sees the police officer as the helper.

Oh, we maybe need to think about what other helpers are there in the community.

So it's not to denigrate the police officer, but how do we help other people see themselves as a possibility, right?

Might be to have a different kind of helper, whether it's someone at the church or someone else who in the community holds the place of respect.

And so to layer again, the conversation about race and racism that we need to see them as connected, but they're also distinct.

- Right, right.

And this is right up with We Stories exactly.

I mean, you use books as a tool, as a way to inform families.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So the reason I love books so much is because I'm just like a voracious reader anyway, and love the beauty of children's books and how they can be used well beyond those childhood years.

And the artwork in them is just amazing.

But you can take a simple children's book and be able to go back to it time and time again and layer on a concept and connect it to other books, or when your child asks a question or you're out somewhere and something happens you can connect so many things back to children's books.

So the "Hair Love", for example, that's another favorite of my four year old daughter.

She loves that book as well, but you need to add "Don't Touch My Hair" to your collection for your daughter because "Don't Touch My Hair" is another one that we read as well.

We have a few different hair books.

But we couple that also with, we have several dolls at home that have different skin tones, different hair textures.

So making the whole thing interactive, and also just normalizing that we have a variety of things.

We have a variety to connect that also to like we always have a variety of skin toned crayons, markers colored pencils, all of those different toys and things are always available.

So that that's just normal.

I was having a conversation with my six-year-old this week actually.

He was playing one of the games on his tablet where you can change the skin color of your character.

And he said, "I just don't understand why this character you can change the skin to brown here, but then none of the other minor characters have different skin colors.

All of the other characters still have white skin.

That just doesn't make sense to me."

This is his conversation to me because we have normalized it as much as possible within our home that he has come to expect like these tools should just be available.

And so I think that's, the simple kinds of things that parents can take, even with really young children is making the deliberate choices around toys, books, places that they go.

(gentle music) And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

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

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Mary Ranken Jordan and Eddie A. Jordan charitable foundation and by the members of nine network.

(gentle music)