(upbeat music) - [Jim] There are some new characters in town.

Thanks to local animation studio Lion Forge.

A diverse group of kids will be showing up in comic books and on Nine PBS.

So, you know it's going to be more than just fun.

- And that's kind of the sugar.

And the educational part is kind of the medicine.

So it goes down easier.

- [Jim] He taught history.

He made history and now stories are being shared around the world.

- And it used to be that in the LGBT community, that we would store our memories in our apartments.

- And we play tourists in our own town and get a different look at our river city.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr.

And over the years, kids have gotten to know some pretty interesting characters, but the best ones are those that both entertain and teach.

The "Sesame Street Gang," "The Letter People" which came out of St. Louis.

And now Ruth Ezell introduces us to the new kids in town.

(upbeat music) - [Ruth] Here's your first look inside the debut issue of a comic book series planned as a game changer for young readers and the grownups who care for them.

It's titled "Drawn In" and follows the adventures of a diverse group of Midwestern boys and girls who share a love of comic books.

The stories are structured to build reading comprehension and overall literacy.

"Drawn In" is the creation of St. Louis based Lion Forge in collaboration with Nine PBS.

Lion Forge co-founders Carl Reed and David Stewart II.

- "Drawn In" is about this set of kids who frequent this kind of comic hobby shop and this larger than life figure, which is Lady Magnitude who's the owner of this shop.

She has this enchanted long box of comics and inside of this long box are the special comics that if in the wrong hands, the characters and the stories escaped from the comic.

They've been entrusted to bring the escaped comics back into the fold.

And also sometimes they collaborate with some of the heroes, and the detectives, and the characters from the comics to solve the real world kind of mysteries using a particular set of tools that correspond directly with like tools to aid in comprehension during reading such as like analyzing, and inspecting, and a bunch of tools that will aid the kid, not just in investigations and bringing comics back, but also in understanding text.

- That's why I think we excel, we are about engaging audiences and that's kind of the sugar and the educational part is kind of the medicine.

So it goes down easier.

- The "Drawn In" project has multiple components, including community engagement, and interactive web experience, and a series of animated episodes to air on Nine PBS.

- Yikes, it's the collector.

- Many of "Drawn In" voice actors like Riley Carter Adams come from the St Louis area.

And while some Lion Forge artists work out of the company's Creve Coeur headquarters, animators, and many other members of the creative team are spread around the world.

There are separate teams for the "Drawn In" comics and the animated episodes.

For David Gordon who writes the comics and Isaac Reed who writes for the animated series, their work is the fulfillment of goals they set in childhood.

- I believe I was about five years old and I ever since I got a X-Men comic back then, and I was watching, I was strangely enough... "The Electric Company" on PBS.

And I was like- - Spider-man.

- When I realized that the comic books I was reading and the shows were connected and that there were writers, I was like, "I have ideas.

I wanna do that too."

So I'd say ever since five, I've been on that goal to make our own things.

- Yeah.

Same thing here.

Ever since being a kid, I wanted to make my own stories, create my own stories and just write and create, so done it all.

Drawing, writing the whole nine yards.

- The impending debut of "Drawn In" comes almost three years after release of another Lion Forge production that made Hollywood take notice.

The 2019 animated short film "Hair Love" tells the touching story of an African American father styling his daughter's hair for the first time.

The following year, it won the Academy Award for best animated short.

- In an industry that there is a big lack of diversity in the animation industry.

And one of our mandates, is not only to produce content that's reflective of various diverse voices, but also be able to foster good creatives into the industry, because it's kind of when we entered it's, been few and far between in terms of people that are in the industry at a high level, and a lot of that owes to people being giving opportunities to Carl's point.

This is one of those things where we can develop that and develop that right here in St. Louis.

- [Ruth] And that may bode well for the future of "Drawn In."

- It's gonna be a limited series right now, but we definitely plan to expand it from there and take the learnings from this process to be able to take the show out for multiple seasons.

- And this is just the beginning.

It has the comic, it has the animation, it also has the website and the games.

And so we just wanna take it as far as possible.

(upbeat music) - It seems these days that just about everything has a designated day or a month.

Now, I don't know what it took to get July designated National Pickle Month but I'm guessing it's a much different story than Brook Butler tells us about LGBT History Month, which began in St. Louis with a teacher who decided it was time to tell the truth.

- I bought this poster at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC in March of 94 and brought it back to my classroom.

We were talking about the Holocaust at that time.

I showed it to my students.

I pointed out to them each of the symbols, what they meant.

For example, a French Jew, a German Jew, a Jehovah's Witness.

This is the pink triangle that gay people had to wear.

And then I said, as a gay person, I would've been forced to wear a pink triangle had I lived then because I am gay.

Well, it was very hard for anyone in 1994.

I'm sure there had been other teachers who were exposed as gay or lesbian in Missouri.

And didn't survive that.

In this case, I felt it was really necessary that I make it.

- [Brook] Rodney Wilson not only made it as a teacher, but his efforts to raise awareness and inclusion of LGBTQ+ history has since spread across the world.

History Month, that's celebrated through the month of October, that was Rodney, a social studies teacher at Mehlville High School.

In fact, he was the first openly gay teacher in the state of Missouri, a significant feat considering how it could have easily ended his career.

- If there had been a backlash that had removed me from the classroom, I felt that would be very harmful to all LGBT kids, to all LGBT teachers, to the idea of civil rights and equality in general.

- [Brook] But as word spread of Rodney's coming out, there were many people who strongly opposed the lack of disciplinary actions by the district as seen in local and national news coverage.

- [Newsreader] Coming up, could this history teacher be history because he came out of the closet in class.

- This is totally inappropriate.

- And that was bad taste.

And bad judgment on the part of the teacher, he should have been reprimanded, maybe fired.

I don't know.

- The gay teacher speaks out tonight after he's verbally vilified at a school board meeting.

- It's not right.

And my kids don't like it.

- We do not need this in our school.

- No wonder our children are ignorant if that's what's being discussed in the classroom.

- Public education has embraced one foolishness after another, in recent decades, but parents should scream bloody murder at the first sign of a school in their district prepared- - [Brook] Parents should scream bloody murder- - Scream bloody murder.

- If this got into school's curriculum.

And that just, I mean, how did that feel to like hear someone so angry.

- To be denounced by a U.S.

Congressman by name on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, actually, now I take as a badge of honor that that happened.

But at the time, if I had been aware of it, that might have been a little disconcerting.

- Because surely you've had to know this is going to get some negative response from faculty, from families, from the community.

I mean, were you prepared for that kind of response?

- I don't know if I had really thought much past the actual event, which I had been thinking about for quite some time.

I think a teacher needs to have some sense of control in the classroom.

And if there's some secret information about a teacher that begins to get out through the rumor mill, for example, that disempowers the teacher.

So I felt that it was really important that I control when and how, under what circumstances that I let that information be known.

(upbeat music) - [Brooks] And just as there were many people who didn't think it was necessary for Rodney to come out to his high school students, there were just as many who praised his act of courage.

- The Mehlville teacher who told his students he's gay, gets a tenured job in the south county district.

- It's being called a victory for gays and lesbians tonight.

- The fact that the guy refers to the fact that he's married is no problem for anybody.

There's no difference here.

He simply referred to his orientation.

- I think Rodney has the right to say he is gay.

It is part of our history it's there, it is so predominant and most people are so blind and they have such tunnel vision.

- It's always a landmark when we take any kind of step towards basic human rights.

- [Brooks] But perhaps the most important reaction was from his students.

Some, even were interviewed in the 1994 Dateline special about Rodney.

- Someone started clapping and the whole class just started clapping and saying, "Oh, Mr. Wilson, that was so brave.

I'm so proud of how you did that and everything."

And everyone was just so proud.

And then I was crying and Mary was crying and I mean, it was really great how he did it.

- The Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center houses many of the items Rodney has donated not only to commemorate him as the first openly gay teacher in the state of Missouri, but also mementos that went into planning LGBTQ+ history month.

In fact, that's what sparked Rodney's decision to come out to his class in the first place, as he hoped history month would gain publicity.

And it did, thanks to Rodney and some dedicated friends.

- And I always appreciate- - [Brooks] Johnda Boyce was one of those dedicated friends who has been collaborating with Rodney ever since they met at Southeast Missouri State in 1989.

- And do you remember how Women's History Month was sort of a model, of course, as Black History Month was the ultimate model and this catalog from the National Women's History Project, do you remember what they had on.

You could buy a pencil from them that had a very nifty saying, what was that?

- I remember buying a box of them.

It said, write women back into history and you and I, and our other folks were back to write LGBT people back into history.

I think it's important for anybody who is first realizing that there're a member of the LGBTQ community to find their history, not just find their people now, but find their history as well, to understand the past, as a backdrop for what we're doing in the future.

- Johnda played a key role in editing the proposals in addition to being on the coordinating council for the first gay and lesbian history month in 1994.

Was it specific to St. Louis the first history month?

- It wasn't because he's the only one who was here.

He was smart enough and managed to make connections in a pre-internet age to gather people from all over the country for his first coordinating council.

So he was here in this area.

I was in Columbus, Ohio.

Kevin Jennings from Boston.

Kevin Boyer from Chicago.

He got Jessea Greenman from California.

- Torey Wilson, Sarah Linchest.

Now, just to get their names into this conversation.

With them, we were creating curriculum.

We were creating ideas about how you might implement a lesbian and gay history month at October.

- We could make it whatever we wanted.

So people could kind of just do what they like to do.

If they liked film, then they could plan film.

If they liked lectures, they could plan a lecture.

Have a gay lesbian, bisexual themed Halloween party.

So we just all tried to find institutions and people who could do some work to get those things to happen.

- [Brook] And it didn't take long for the idea to catch on.

In 1995, St. Louis mayor, Freeman Bosley signed a proclamation for history month and other cities soon followed suit.

After about a decade of continually spreading the celebrations of history month across the country, it then caught wind overseas.

- We've since recruited 23 representatives from 16 history months around the world.

- [Brook] So how does that feel to have that global impact?

It's great, actually.

I thought this part of my life was over that it had been done 30 years ago.

And then now this international committee is creating new avenues of creativity and ways to express this idea.

And the idea that we're now sewing the seeds for future history months.

Now in my classroom, that first October of 1994, I wasn't able to do anything.

The school district made it clear that I wasn't to participate in that event.

- [Brook] I hope he spoke to you about, or if not, you can certainly read about the NEA, National Education Association.

Treating it like a hot potato a little bit after first endorsing it.

It shouldn't be controversial but it was, it was definitely controversial.

- [Brook] Well, and it still is today.

- It hasn't changed.

I was very pleased in Jefferson city last year to find he was honored as a trailblazer in Missouri's bicentennial exhibit in the capital.

But it was only a few months after I saw artifacts from his starting history month in our capital that a display about Kansas city's LGBT history was removed.

- That's something history teaches.

It's not always a forward trajectory.

There are steps back.

And sometimes those steps back are brutal.

Now, even though I wasn't specifically to be part of lesbian and gay history month in October, 1994, still, I was able to bring things into the classroom.

When it's appropriate, for example, you can't talk about 1960s social movements.

African American civil rights movement, women's movement, native American movement, Latino movement.

You can't talk about those movements without also talking about Stonewall, lesbian and gay history, pride marches, the beginning of an attempt to make oneself and one's community equal in the larger societies.

I had students at the time recreate protest posters.

Pro and con.

All sides of issues.

- [Brook] Oh wow, okay.

- So we could have a conversation about at the time, what did people think pro and con, why did they have those thoughts and where have we moved the conversation to today.

That this place we're at, this library and research center is a place where we store our memories.

And it used to be that in the LGBT community, that we would store our memories in our apartments.

So not having a history is a foundation from which one can build a life, build a career, build a community, means you're starting at a deficit because the bottom line really is, we want all of our young people to learn to read well, write well, speak well, think well, be part of the conversation, be good citizens, be good community members.

And if you're a gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgender child, and you're in a school in which it's not safe to be those things, your ability to learn to read, write, speak, think well is hindered.

So if we believe in the value and integrity of all young people, then we have to practice that.

- And our next story is, well, it's this.

We know St. Louis is a river city because it has a river, and bridges, and barges, and oh yeah, it has these, the Tom Sawyer and the Becky Thatcher.

- Please do watch your step on the outside decks and the outside stairways.

- They've been taking a lot of people on excursions up and down the Mississippi river since 1964.

- You are allowed down on that open bow area during our cruise.

The first deck is also where you'll find the- - [Jim] But like a lot of businesses dependent on tourism, the pandemic hit pretty hard.

So the Bi-State Development agency which runs these boats is looking to bounce back.

- Last couple of years have been a little challenging with the COVID restrictions.

We had a period of time where we actually had to shut the river boat operations down, and then moving forward, we had to live within the restrictions.

But at this point we are open for business.

- If everybody's ready for the hearse, here we go.

(hearse blowing) You had the good signs about the tourism this year for you.

- [Mary] Yeah, they've been fantastic.

We are seeing a lot of our cruises being sold out.

- [Jim] There are of course the daily hour-long sight scene trips, but there are also dinner cruises, music cruises, a drag show cruise.

- [Amanda] This bridge, the Eads Bridge was named after the man who spearheaded- - But on these daily excursions, the history of this river city is always part of the trip, usually given by the captain.

But this year they've started something new.

- So we're sailing on one of the world's most historic storied rivers and St. Louis- - A partnership with the Missouri Historical Society.

- So we are doing a takeover of the river boats So one Thursday a month, we're gonna take over and we're gonna tell new stories and give some new, some fresh perspectives on the riverfront.

- Our museum's gonna take over- - [Jim] Amanda Clark usually gives historical walking tours in the city, but jumped onboard this opportunity.

- That my favorite thing in getting ready for this was learning more about Bloody Island where they used to fight the duels.

The 1850s duelling was very rare as the rise of political parties actually made arguing in public more acceptable.

The script that they were working with, which is wonderful.

And it's a classic and everybody's been doing it for a while.

And I tried to find some new stories that would be relevant to newer audiences, stories about places like Brooklyn, Illinois, the first black town in the United States, or, East St. Louis.

So to just kinda expand on some of those stories.

- [Jim] A little more relevant for today's time.

- [Amanda] Correct.

- [Jim] On these trips, you'll find locals and tourists.

These are students from St. Louis on their eighth grade trip, which included for many of them, their first trip up the arch and these folks they're from Alaska.

The boy was having surgery here the next day, and they wanted to stay busy.

So they did the tourist thing.

- It's pretty amazing.

I'm sad I don't have my older son 'cause he's been doing a lot of this history.

So to see the Lewis and Clark go by earlier and we've been reading Tom Sawyer.

(upbeat music) - [Jim] The Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher are now actually a part of this river city's history.

They've been here since the 1960s.

Replicas of a golden age that made St. Louis the gateway to the west.

There was a time when steamboats crowded the St. Louis levee carrying cargo, and people, settlers and immigrants.

By the 1930s when these home movies were taken, there was still plenty of barge traffic, but only a few surviving paddle wheelers.

This one, the Golden Eagle could be booked for excursions long and short, and many St Louisans today remember a riverfront crowded with attractions, the Admiral, the Goldenrod showhobat, the ill fated replica of the Santa Maria, the Robert E. Lee, the USS Inaugural minesweeper and the floating McDonald's.

But in 1993, much of what was left was swept away in the great flood.

Today, along with the helicopter tours, the Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher are survivors.

The thing about a trip like this is as well as you know St. Louis, this is a whole new way to look at it.

Admittedly, the scenery is less than dramatic.

There is the old power plant which is pretty impressive along with the bridges, but no forts or mansions or steep bluffs.

And the history they talk about is mostly gone.

- The French fur trade post of St. Louis was founded in 1764.

- [Jim] But when the captain takes the microphone, he does point out that the Mississippi river is still a pretty busy place.

- But there is a lot of cargo moving.

It almost always moves in barges.

And of course, barges need to be loaded and unloading.

And we have a lot of that going on around us right now.

- So many people think the industrial areas are abandoned and nothing's happening there.

And there's so much happening in the industrial areas.

I love getting to tell people that.

I think everyone in St. Louis, whether you grew up here or you didn't, I did not grow up in St. Louis and I love coming down here 'cause it gives you such an intimate view of the city.

And you just get to understand where it came from.

(upbeat music) - Finally, our friends at stl.org have shared another one of their stories about interesting creative St Louisans.

And Cbabi Bayoc certainly fits the bill.

You may already know his name, but if not, there's a good chance you've seen his work.

(upbeat music) - Sometimes I could feel the balance of everything working on the canvas.

Easily, next four or five hours.

I'm just grabbing paint and stuff's just everywhere.

That's when I know I've something just happened.

Yes.

(classical music) Took first art class in junior college actually.

I mean, it wasn't necessarily great in the beginning, but once I got to rambling just kept painting.

I haven't looked back since.

When I was in junior college and teacher was like, "Man, you're really gonna make it.

You need to go to New York, know the art scene."

And most of those artists never have anything, and it's small window of those who actually make through and become great.

It's still tough.

One day it clicked in my brain.

I was like, "Wait a minute.

Y'all are trying to train out our professors."

Like I ain't come here to be an art professor.

I wanna be an artist.

Coming in the studio, something will get painted.

I just don't know what.

I have two pieces that are almost done but I may not even touch them.

I could come in with all the intent in the world of looking at those but then I see a blank canvas and I see part of the painting, and I'm super excited about that part of the painting.

Like one of these gotta come down, I gotta put it up there and I gotta start roughing it in.

I'm addicted to materials as well as what the paint looks like next to each other.

When I scrape something a certain way or a color lands next to another color, I'm very drawn by the energy of the moment.

I can feel the excitement, music gets a little louder.

(upbeat music) It could be enough where it's part of it to where I need to grab a blank and try to replicate that experience that I got in just that part of the paint.

More often than not, it's when something happens where that it was totally unexpected.

It's like, wait a minute and it catches me and it's like, wow, this definitely is a life experience.

Like from going from beginning to end, I'm going from kindergarten through college in every painting, drawing the line, erasing the line, finding the colors, putting them down, taking away, knowing when something doesn't work, like doing all that.

I gotta go through all that in everything.

My flow is that I don't have a flow.

(Cbabi laughs) (upbeat music) I have no control over how people respond.

That's my intent with a lot of them, specifically when I'm dealing with certain subjects, I want people to see the importance, especially the Black Father Series or when I'm drawing my kids with the fist up, wanting children to feel empowered.

I want people to get with my work, not just in the art, but also in the possibility that even if it's not specifically art, the thing that you you enjoy doing can actually be your life, your living.

I think the biggest risk, I think when most artists, especially when nobody knows you is staying with it, even when nothing's being bought or anybody knows you or sees you, like just believing that someday that'll change.

Bigger than anything, I like the idea of people seeing it, not somebody actually making a living using this stuff like, 'cause it's still rare.

I think motivation to me is a creative process, chasing the high, just like this is my drug of choice and chasing the high because honestly once I get done with the painting, it's just kind of gone.

So now I gotta pick up another one and try and get that feeling again.

And I don't know when the film's gonna kick in.

And honestly it almost never happens in the first 90% of it.

Like all that to me is homework.

Like y'all hate homework that's for me.

It doesn't really start to feel great till it's almost done.

Like then, then it's like, okay.

But I know as long as I keep going, I know from experience that at some point it's gonna work out.

I just gotta keep pushing through.

(upbeat music) - And that's "Living St.

Louis."

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kircherr.

And we'll see you next time.

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