Posted on 01/31/2015 11:03:04 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It was an overcast Saturday in August, eight days after Michael Brown's death, when Juanita Morris rushed barefoot out the front door of Fashions R Boutique to watch hundreds of protesters surging north on West Florrisant Avenue. She was too excited to remember her shoes.
"I was working and I saw my people out here, I'm for it, I'm supporting it, so I came out," said Morris, who moved her boutique to this spot in Dellwood ten years ago. She said she wasn't afraid of the looters and vandals that struck other business the previous night. She refused to board up her shop's windows.
"God has got me covered," she said.
Much has changed since that day in August. On Thursday morning, Morris welcomed researchers from the Missouri History Museum to pick through the twisted and charred remains of Fashions R Boutique. The shop had been torched on November 24, shortly after the announcement that a grand jury's would not indict former Ferguson cop Darren Wilson in Michael Brown's killing.
Earlier this month, one of Morris' old customers put her in touch with museum officials seeking artifacts for their Ferguson Collecting Initiative. At first, Morris was incredulous.
"I told them I didn't think they would find anything," said the 69-year-old Florrisant resident. "Everything was destroyed."
But beneath piles of ash are potential remnants of Ferguson history, artifacts that Chris Gordon, the museum's director of library and collections, hopes to recover and preserve for future generations.
"It's like an archaeological excavation," Gordon explained. "This is the first opportunity we've had to actually go through any of the buildings that were affected by the rioting."
Yesterday, Gordon and his team carefully picked their way amid debris, finding stacks of Morris' business cards, sewing machines, flashy high-heeled shoes and a scarf rack, among other things. The museum has plans to open a civil-rights exhibit in 2017, and reaching store owners like Morris is essential for historians trying to record the complex history of Ferguson.
Indeed, building a historically significant collection out of St. Louis' tumultuous present will take time, maybe even decades.
"Historians say we need 25 years to actually get that objective perspective," said Gwen Moore, the museum's curator for urban landscape and community identity. In her view, preserving these artifacts of destruction is crucial to the museum's mission of preserving the full history of Ferguson and the movements sparked by Brown's death.
"Whether you agree or disagree, you have to understand what happened," Moore said. "You have to understand the anger and frustration."
As for Morris, she is focused on moving on. With the help of a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $20,000, she has begun to rebuild the business she ran for 28 years before the flames ripped it away. She reopened in a temporary location, but she wants to reconstruct her store on West Florrisant as soon as possible.
Even after all the anguish, Morris said she found a kind of solace in imagining how future museum visitors will learn from the artifacts recovered in her wreckage. When asked what it feels like to become part of history, she answered without hesitation:
"Can you explain a miracle?" she said. "You just accept it."
Photos at link.
Yeah, the damage from an idiotic riot, that’s what I call artifacts worthy of the Smithsonian.
Because idiots like this woman and her idiot supporters would call me racist regardless of what I type I will just stand by my thoughts and take the punches. because what I want to say would certainly brand me as a racist in progressive eyes.
Gonna put the Smithsonian out of business!
Yes, they go into the Smithsonian right next to the replaced bad shock absorbers from the bus Rosa Parks rode on.
How blitheringly stupid!
"I was working and I saw my people out here, I'm for it, I'm supporting it, so I came out," said Morris, who moved her boutique to this spot in Dellwood ten years ago. She said she wasn't afraid of the looters and vandals that struck other business the previous night. She refused to board up her shop's windows. "God has got me covered," she said.Why, because God is a racist? What a racist a-hole.
We live in bizarro world now.
In today’s news a five alarm fire destroyed the Ferguson Riot Museum which relics from the unrest after Blacks found Michael Brown was a criminal thug and not the nice little boy the Pravda Media Complex attempted to make him out to be.Al Sharpton’s estate was deeply saddened.
Wow...this is unreal.
They are not archaeologists, they are trash collectors. Dumpster divers.
this stuff will be of historical importance...when it is history. Give it a few decades or so.
Don't blame Him for your "Church of Hate" acts!
The kitchen tables that Japan signed on on the Missouri.
The flag from Iwo Jima.
Lincoln’s clothing the night he was killed.
The Betsy Ross flag.
And now - sparkly shoes from a riot that was a turning point in the freedom of black people in America and their self-determination in fulfillment of racial equality and justice at the dawning of a new age of the diminished white power structure. /s
I have a couple of observation on this story, First thing that comes to mind is the quote from Juanita Morris. “”I was working and I saw my people out here, I’m for it, I’m supporting it, so I came out,”, Key words MY PEOPLE. That says a lot to me.
Second is the, “The museum has plans to open a civil-rights exhibit in 2017”. Key words being CIVIL-RIGHTS
Used in context with Ferguson, MO, shouldn’t that be, Civil-Wrongs exhibit?
Nancy Pee would say ‘you have to burn it to see what’s in it’...
No bother as poo bear would say.
Building an altar to an unlawful act of violence makes as much sense as burning down your local commerce district.
It’s not their fault!
Merely something in their genes. Remembrances of things from their ancestors and the same reasoning that can be applied to the mau mau uprising.
This would explain the anti-societal behavior of the parasitic Halfrican squatting in the White Hut.
If you happen to be White, everything brands you racist in progressive eyes. So, you might as well face the music and type what you feel.
So, Soviet style rioting and destruction is from God? I think not. I doubt God is in any “miracle” that has such wanton disregard for human life and property.
People are growing up with a socialist mentality, thinking this is good and normal. Only an act of God can change this now.
On the bright side, She got twenty thousand of the White Liberals dollars from GoFundMe.
“...hopes to recover and preserve for future generations.”
Why?
Even hoarders, people who obsessively save things like old newspapers, empty jars, and dead cats in their freezer, have to draw the line somewhere.
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