- [Jim] It turns out bees are a lot smarter than a lot of us give them credit for.

It also turns out that this St. Louis science teacher was one of the first to figure that out.

- And he started a field that never really got going again until the 1980s.

- [Jim] They're native, they're nutritious, and they have their champions.

They're a good-sized fruit with a small window of opportunity.

- [Brooke] What's your favorite way to eat it?

- It cannot get past just being beautifully ripe in my mouth.

(laughs) - [Jim] You're welcome to watch and welcome to play this game, but keep the cheering to a minimum so the players can hear the ball.

(ball beeping) And the quirky story about how one man 200 years ago reshaped the new state of Missouri.

- Actually with some assistance, but it was primarily him.

- It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kircherr, and we've done a lot of stories about famous people and about people who maybe should be more famous than they are.

This next story is one of those.

You can find information about Charles Henry Turner, do a search and you come up with information related to St. Louis, to science, and to black history.

We began our search at a place where he would have been really comfortable.

A laboratory full of bees.

- [Kamau] It's a little bit of a struggle sometimes, but there you go... - [Jim] If you don't like bees, you probably would not like professor Amy Dunlap's lab at the University of Missouri St. Louis.

But coming here was like coming home for Kamau MuseMorris.

He's now at Stanford University, but he first came here as a high schooler in the STARS program, which puts high school students in real labs with real scientists doing real science.

Professor Dunlap asked him to stop by to help tell the story of a man they both admire.

- Sometimes, you know, I look around I don't see people look like me necessarily.

So it was really great to hear about Mr. Turner.

- I first learned about Charles Henry Turner when an award was created by the Animal Behavior Society, and it was named after him.

And that award is a fellowship that brings students from underrepresented groups to their very first scientific meeting.

(light music) - [Jim] Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati just after the Civil War ended.

He was his high school's valedictorian.

At the University of Cincinnati he earned a master's degree in biology with a focus on animal behavior.

Later, he earned a PhD at the University of Chicago.

His dissertation was a study of ant behavior.

He would hold various teaching jobs at black colleges and high schools, ending up in St. Louis at Sumner High.

He probably would have been a good fit at Tuskegee Institute, but when he applied, the school had just hired George Washington Carver.

His research was wide ranging, but he's best remembered for his study of bees and other insects.

And while he published more than 70 scientific papers, he never held a professorship at a major research university, almost certainly because of his race.

But that wasn't the only thing that set him apart.

His work was challenging mainstream thinking of the day.

Today, it's considered groundbreaking.

- He's really the founding father of insect cognition.

And he started a field that never really got going again until the 1980s.

- Turner came to St. Louis in 1908 to teach science at Sumner, the city's black high school in the Ville.

He stayed for 14 years and despite carrying a full teaching load and with no proper laboratory, no grad students, no funding, he independently continued highly sophisticated research.

Dr. Turner put a lot of emphasis on field observations, and his outdoor laboratory was here, in O'Fallon Park.

He conducted a series of very carefully designed experiments.

One of them tested honey bees' ability to recognize colors and patterns.

And he was diligent, he repeated these experiments over and over and over again to test for all kinds of variables.

He wasn't just observing bee behavior, he was tying it to bee intelligence.

- And his views on cognition itself predated just about everyone's views on cognition until the 70s for any animal.

- [Jim] So explain to me what you mean by cognition.

- Yeah so for a long time, people thought that animals were just instinctual beings.

They would respond to a stimulus and they would have this innate response that they would do.

So they were basically like little robots going around in the world.

And he challenged that view early on.

- [Jim] In the conclusion of his PhD dissertation, Turner wrote this, "Ants are much more than mere reflex machines.

They are self-acting creatures guided by memories of past individual experience."

- And that was absolutely ahead of its time.

Now what we are finding out is that insects have sophisticated cognition that people never guessed about.

Honey bees have a concept of zero.

Bees have cultural transmission.

This is something we thought about for decades as only primates or dolphins or whales.

And so, you know, there are no limits I think to what a small insect brain is capable in terms of problem solving.

- [Jim] So his work is still relevant?

- Absolutely relevant, yeah.

- [Jim] Turner may have long been underappreciated, but he was published in his lifetime and his work was cited by others, although perhaps not as much as it should have been.

And in 1910, 2 years after moving here, he was elected the first African-American member of the Academy of Science of St. Louis.

He was a brilliant scientist with incredible insight into animal behavior.

But Turner also had plenty to say about human behavior.

He was active in the early 20th century civil rights movement in St. Louis, and wrote about what was then called the Negro problem.

A problem he said that could be fixed through higher education for blacks and for whites.

- I've worked with honey bees before this for like two or three years, and never once have I gotten stung.

So I'm pretty lucky with that.

That's something to celebrate, yes.

- [Jim] At Stanford University, Kamau has switched his focus from biology to international relations.

But he takes with him lessons from this laboratory and from the life of Dr. Turner.

- Really to see someone who's walked in those shoes and to have a path to even take what he went through, how he persevered.

Growing up, and even when I first entered this interest, I didn't know about him, right?

And it's something that's really sad 'cause he's a large part of, you know, black history in this field.

- Charles Henry Turner did some of his most important work during his 14 years in St. Louis.

Dedicated not just to his research, but to his young students and to the future of his people.

But it took its toll.

He retired from Sumner in 1922.

Biographies describe him as overworked and underpaid.

He died a year later at the age of 56.

We should be amazed at what he was able to do and should ask what more he might have done, what more he might have discovered, how many future scientists he might have mentored, if only.

(soft music) Our next story by Brooke Butler is also about something that's local, but really not very well known.

It's not a person, it's a food.

And it's there for the taking and yet hardly anybody does.

(birds chirping) - I think when you tell somebody, "Hey, like in the woods where you go hiking all the time is the largest fruit native to North America and it tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana."

You'd be like, "What?"

- [Brooke] That was exactly my reaction when learning about the pawpaw.

Now you've probably heard reference to a pawpaw from this song.

♪ Pickin' up pawpaws ♪ Put 'em in your pocket ♪ Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch ♪ But even growing up knowing that song, I'm still not exactly sure what it is or why it's so popular.

(jaunty music) - I just think that what a magical tree that, - [Brooke] Matt Lebon is very familiar with the intriguing reputation of the pawpaw through his work with Custom Foodscaping.

Different from traditional landscaping companies, Custom Foodscaping incorporates their designs with food producing plants and trees, like the pawpaw.

And maybe it doesn't look like anything special, but the benefits of planting these trees and the meaning it can have for native Midwesterners is pretty cool.

The pawpaw is a native understory plant, meaning it can sufficiently grow in the shade under canopies of trees.

The pawpaw commonly grows in floodplain areas, which is why they thrive in the Midwest.

- But in the woods and they can grow like 20, 30 feet tall and they don't have a very ornamental quality.

When you plant them in the sun as a landscape plant, they actually have a really nice Christmas tree like shape and they make wonderful landscape plants.

So pawpaw is asimina triloba.

- [Brooke] Asimina triloba, that's just the fancy name for the pawpaw, referring to the small size of the tree with the large leaves and fruit.

- It loses its leaves in winter, just like all of our leaves, it is deciduous.

But then when those leaves open up, it looks like pretty much nothing else we can grow.

- [Brooke] And when referring to the pawpaw as native, it means more than growing around North America for thousands of years, it's actually more beneficial for our ecosystem, because it doesn't bring in foreign pests, like some exotic plants.

- It almost feels like a birthright that we're deprived of.

- So Matt sold me on the pawpaw.

I mean, it's my birthright so I obviously have to try it.

But for being the Missouri state fruit tree, the fruit is surprisingly difficult to find, especially in the city.

That's because the pawpaw has such a short shelf life, you wouldn't be able to find it in your average grocery store.

Luckily places like EarthDance Farms save city dwellers from foraging through the pawpaw patch.

So here's the pawpaw.

- Here we go!

- Here's the famous pawpaw.

Listen, I have Googled everywhere like, where do you find pawpaws in St. Louis, but here it is.

- Yeah!

- Like you grow them in Ferguson, in North County.

- We do, thanks to some folks that actually have done some improved varieties.

So in the woods, the pawpaws you find might be a lot smaller, or the pits might be larger.

- So I've heard you can put it in custard or ice cream or whatever.

What's your favorite way to eat a pawpaw?

- I have never done any of those things because it cannot get past just being beautifully ripe in my mouth.

- All right, so let's get to it.

- I just wanna eat it raw.

- Let's get to it.

- Okay, so first we're just gonna slice into it, and the skin is very thin, it's kinda like mango shaped, you know, it's actually in the mango family.

- [Brooke] I can smell it from here.

- Yeah it's very aromatic.

- Oh wow look at that.

- [Molly] The pro way to eat a pawpaw is to go like this.

- [Brooke] Okay.

- So you take the bigger piece.

- Okay.

- And here we go.

- All right.

- You gotta get her trying it.

- Okay, here we go.

That is exactly like a mango and a banana.

- Yeah.

- It's like the texture of a banana.

- Mm-hm.

They're super nutritious, high in potassium.

- [Brooke] Oh, okay that's even better.

And look at these, like, - Those are the pits.

They're very robust, so you can save the pits and actually grow your own.

- [Brooke] This is really good.

- Good I'm glad you like it.

- I love it.

So prime pawpaw season is, And then getting down my cadence.

Pretty much right now.

Yeah.

- Got it.

- So sorry folks, if you're watching this a few weeks later, they're probably gone.

- Gotta wait till next year.

- Yeah.

- Yum.

Is it just me or has it increased in popularity.

- Oh it has totally increased in popularity.

- [Brooke] And is that just because of the awareness.

- I think it's because of just like with the rise in gardening and farmer's markets, we're seeing, "How can I start to connect with the tangible living, biological world right outside my door?"

You know, that there's this incredibly delicious fruit that we just don't even know about, and I grew up knowing maples and oaks and all these other trees that were growing along my street.

But I didn't even know the one that was right in the woods behind my house that was just growing there that nobody planted at all.

(light music) - One thing I think I can safely say about St. Louis is there's no such thing as too much baseball.

But this next story by Kara Vaninger is about a version of the game that you've really got to hear to believe.

- So this is a beep baseball.

It's a one pound Chicago-style softball.

So in it, it has a pin, it's kinda suppressing the speaker.

And at the bottom, you have your speaker here.

This is what they sound like.

(ball beeps) (ball continues beeping) - Everything we've been taught about the game of baseball has been see the ball, hit the ball, look the ball into your glove.

I'm doing this now coaching my son for T-Ball.

So when I heard about beep ball, I was fascinated.

- [Kara] Beep ball is an adaptive version of baseball for players who are visually impaired.

Since there are varying degrees of visual ability, almost everyone is required to wear a blindfold.

Although the sport was designed to be played without relying on sight, a few positions like the pitcher, require it.

- The pitcher does not want to strike anybody out.

It's the opposite.

- [Kara] Because in beep ball, the pitcher and batter are on the same team.

- The most challenging part is getting right to where their bat is.

And then getting down my cadence.

Ready, set, pitch!

- The batters have to keep their swings consistent, but it's the pitcher's job to get the ball where that bat's aimed.

- [Mike] When the ball is put into play, they'll run to a padded first or third base, which makes a buzzing sound.

- They're kind of these tall foam, I call 'em my tackling dummy looking things.

- So it's completely random, you'll either go to first base or third base, there's a specialized umpire that's flipping that switch.

- But they need to make it to that base before the blindfolded fielders are able to retrieve the ball.

- [Kara] Now, at this point, those who haven't played beep ball might think the game is starting to sound a little dangerous.

After all, fielders are running, sliding and diving to catch a ball they cannot see before the runner makes it to a base they can't see.

(base beeping) - Woo!

- Well we wear pads, you can't see 'em, but I have pads on.

It is a contact sport, sometimes.

- I've never seen anybody get hurt playing the game.

I'll put that one out there.

(base beeping) - [Kara] Working together through verbal communication and the guidance of two sighted spotters, the players defending the field stick to their zones to avoid collisions.

But those pads still come in handy when diving for the ball or base.

- A lot of teamwork involved, communication is a big part of it, but playing a sport with your ears, it's not easy.

- [Kara] Which means the audience has to adapt too.

- We kinda have to teach people when the ball's hit into play, the crowd's supposed to be silent, your teammates are supposed to be silent while the play is going on.

So the fielders can field the ball, the runners can hear the bases.

After the play's over, cheer your head off.

- Go!

- Yeah!

That is safe!

- Safe!

- Woo!

- [Kara] Though the rules might be different, beep ball inspires just as much devotion, trash talk and satisfaction as the game it was adapted from.

- One of my friends asked me to come out and sub-in.

I subbed-in and I never left.

I became a pitcher, started my own team.

I've been doing it every year since then.

- It doesn't get any better than, you know, like laying out for a ball and stopping it, getting somebody out.

I think that's the best feeling.

- It's intimidating to be in the field, completely blindfolded, not knowing what's around you.

And it's so much fun.

After an inning or two, that fear goes away.

And now you're just like, "All right, I wanna get the ball."

(upbeat music) (ball beeps) - All of a sudden you make contact, and it's just a rush of adrenaline and you hear the base buzz and you just run for it.

Put everything into it.

There's nothing like it.

- [Kara] And until 1964, there was nothing like it.

The first beeping softball was invented by telephone engineer Charlie Fairbanks in an effort to include people with visual impairments in recreational sports.

The first beep baseball World Series Tournament was held in 1975.

And in 1976, the National Beep Baseball Association was formed in Chicago.

In St. Louis, MindsEye Radio has been hosting recreational beep ball tournaments as a fundraiser for the past 11 years.

- MindsEye, they've been around since the mid 70s, and they were called the Radio Readers Network, and they had a body of volunteers that would read local publications, some national, and produce a radio station for a print impaired audience.

- So we read newspapers, magazines, books, grocery store ads.

- MindsEye also offers audio description services at sporting events, the zoo, and other St. Louis attractions.

- We go into theaters and museums and provide description of visual elements of productions and exhibits.

- We have such a rich and great arts and culture scene here in the St. Louis area.

It's part of the experience in this community so we want to make sure everybody can enjoy the experience fully.

- [Kara] And of course, in a town like St. Louis, the same goes for baseball.

- There's not a whole lot of team sports that somebody with visual impairments play and that's something that MindsEye can give back to people.

- [Kara] MindsEye creates awareness around visual impairment and the sport by providing beep ball demos at schools and businesses to people of all abilities.

- I think it's bringing notoriety to the hard work that the people without sight do.

And it's also allowing the people with sight to know what they go through.

- [Kara] Due to the growing number of players who wanted to compete nationally, MindsEye launched the Gateway Archers in 2020.

- My goal is keep this team completely homegrown, where it's St. Louis players, people who live in this region, playing for the Gateway Archers against teams from Indianapolis, Boston, all the way as far as Argentina or Taiwan.

- I'm really shooting for the stars.

I expect excellence, I expect that we're going to represent St. Louis well.

- [Kara] Team captain, Chad Dillon, had ties to beep ball long before playing it.

- When I was 16 years old, I was in the Boy Scouts and working on my Eagle Scout project.

I was presented the opportunity to build the bases that we use.

And I built 24 sets of bases that we shipped all over the world.

At 16 I didn't know that I had a degenerative eye disease.

I didn't know that I was gonna go blind.

Later in my 20s I found out that I was gonna lose my vision and I started playing ball almost as soon as I became legally blind.

I'm really proud of what I did, obviously to earn my rank of Eagle Scout, but I'm as proud of what we've been able to do with this team.

- [Kara] Many of the Gateway Archers have played in the World Series Tournaments for other teams, and bring those years of experience with them this season.

Mari Blumenthal was just 12 years old when she attended her first World Series with mom, Kim.

- She got to pitch to another girl who was young too, and this girl had never hit a ball that had been pitched to her, she had only hit a ball off of a tee.

And the very first ball Mari pitched to her, she hit.

So that was very exciting.

- This'll be my ninth World Series.

I've been on a few teams, I've been lucky enough to place second and third place.

I haven't won the championship yet, so that's my next goal.

- [Kara] As beep ball continues to grow in St. Louis, players of all abilities are encouraged to give it a try with one disclaimer, once you start playing, you might never want to stop.

- Anyone with a visual impairment or if you have children with a visual impairment, I would highly encourage you to come out and get involved.

- We realize for people that can't see or have never been able to see, you know, they may not have any concept of what it is to swing a bat.

- Don't be scared.

It's really fun.

- It's fun and we're all here to help.

- We're pretty serious here, and we want to win games, but you know, we're all friends.

- You get to meet other people that are like you, you get to run and be free on a baseball field and experience winning and celebrating with your teammates.

All the traditional benefits from competing on a team sport still apply here, you know?

- [Players] Good game, good game!

- We're in the Mississippi River town of Caruthersville, Missouri.

Across the river, that's Tennessee.

Head that direction, you'll hit Arkansas.

But if you head that way, you also hit Arkansas.

Yep, we're in the Bootheel.

That's the where part of the story, but for the Missouri Bicentennial, we wanted to know why.

I mean, why a Bootheel?

There's no good geographic reason for this southern thrust into Arkansas, which apparently challenged not just surveyors, but mapmakers as well.

And in fact, when Missouri petitioned for statehood, it wasn't there.

This is what Missouri was supposed to look like.

The northwest corner, the Platte addition, that was originally Indian territory.

It was added to the state and open to settlers in 1837.

And the southern border, that was just a straight line along the 36, 30 parallel.

That was a dividing line going back to colonial times, the border between Virginia and North Carolina, it was just extended out and became the Kentucky, Tennessee border and would have been extended across the Mississippi to become the Missouri, Arkansas border.

So what happened?

Well, the town of Caruthersville, population about 6,000, county seat of Pemiscot County, is a good place to find out.

And what you find out is it's not so much a question of why, but who.

That's him up there, right?

- That is John Hardeman Walker.

- We met with Donald Jeffries of the Pemiscot County Historical Society, to learn about the man considered the father, sometimes called the czar of the Missouri Bootheel.

Is it really one guy who made this happen?

- Actually with some assistance, but it was primarily him.

- John Walker came from Tennessee to settle in this region in 1810, not an easy place to make a living.

It was swampy, prone to flooding, sparsely populated.

And when the big New Madrid earthquakes hit in 1811, 1812, a lot of people who survived simply moved out and never came back.

And Walker stayed?

- Mm-hm, yes.

- [Jim] He might've seen the post-earthquake situation as an opportunity.

- Yes, he did.

- [Jim] 'Cause if other people are leaving that's more land for him.

- Yeah.

Yes, he had a man's land holdings with the farming that he was doing on what he could.

But he also had a man's herds of livestock.

- When the issue of Missouri statehood came, Walker was a leading citizen of what was then called Little Prairie.

And with his business and political connections, he looked forward to being part of the new state instead of a federal territory.

And the borders weren't set yet.

One proposal included pieces of today's Iowa and Kansas, and a big chunk to the south.

But Congress opted for a smaller squared off version, and Walker found himself south of the border.

- He wanted the protection of a state.

Then that's when Walker went to Washington.

- [Jim] This is when the facts get mixed up with the legend.

Jeffries found a 1937 newspaper article allegedly recounting the moment Walker heard the bad news.

- And it starts out, "They can't do that to me!"

According to what he supposed to have said.

And he jumped on his mule, but more likely a man with his prominence probably jumped on a horse.

- So we're already questioning the historical record here.

- Uh-huh.

(chuckles) But anyway, he rode 700 miles to Washington, DC.

- [Jim] Very little is known about what Walker actually did, whom he talked to when he got there.

There's no records.

But Jeffries and other historians reject colorful versions that portray Walker wandering the halls of Congress, making his argument with a muzzle-loading shotgun.

More likely, things back then got done pretty much like they get done today.

- He did have connections.

Plus he was a prominent landowner.

He was a person of wealth.

So there might've been a little backdoor dealings going on as well.

Anyway, he got what he wanted.

- [Jim] When Walker returned from the Capitol, bottom line, so to speak, the new state of Missouri had a Bootheel.

The Bootheel is more than just lines on a map.

It is distinct in its geography, its history, economy.

And Jeffries says while it is a part of the state, it is also in some ways, apart from the state.

- And yes, it should've been Arkansas land.

The culture here is more akin to Arkansas.

You go up to Cape Girardeau, it's a different culture.

But you know, Walker did what he did and here we are today.

- If you're looking for signs of this chapter of Missouri history, and I am, you don't have to go very far, because John Hardeman Walker is still here, right in the center of town.

Just a short walk off the Main Street in downtown Caruthersville, you will find his grave.

And a plaque placed here by the DAR.

"John Hardeman Walker 1794, 1860.

Enterprising citizen of Little Prairie.

Through his efforts, the Bootheel became a part of Missouri."

So that's the story of the Bootheel.

The story of a time and a place and a man who 200 years ago literally helped reshape the state of Missouri.

And that's "Living St.

Louis."

Thanks for joining us, I'm Jim Kircherr and we'll see you next time.

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

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues)