Father Moses

Father Moses Berry grew up in Greene County on a farm that had been in his family for decades. His family was among just a few who did not flee for their lives following a 1906 lynching of three black men by a mob on Springfield, Missouri s public square. Before the lynching, 25 of Greene County s population was black, by 1910, just 2 were AfroAmerican. The thousands who fled did not return. The Berry family remained and endured decades of segregation in the era before the Civil Rights Movement. Father Moses tells the stories of slavery and hardship handed down by his ancestors. In 2003, I spent a few days with him at his black history museum in Ash Grove, Missouri and at his tiny Eastern Orthodox chruch on his family s land. This is one man s story about being black in a predominately white area, and what the decades have taught him about racial inequities and faith in family.