James Milton Turner (1840-1915)

Slave
Educator
Ambassador

Born in slavery in St. Louis, Missouri, Turner’s father was able to purchase his family’s freedom in 1843. James became a butler for Madison Miller, going with him into the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Miller’s brother-in-law, Missouri Governor Thomas Fletcher, appointed Turner Assistant Superintendent of Schools in charge of establishing schools for freed Blacks throughout Missouri. Turner raised money to establish Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri, which was the first high school and teacher training institute for Blacks in Missouri. He was one of the founders and leaders of the Missouri Equal Rights League, the first African American political organization in Missouri. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Turner Ambassador to Liberia (1871 - 1878), making Turner the first African American diplomat to represent the United States in a foreign country. After returning to St. Louis he worked on the Refugee Relief Board helping thousands of destitute southern Blacks who were migrating to Kansas. In 1881 Turner organized the Freedman’s Oklahoma Association and for the next 20 years he battled for the rights of Blacks in Indian Territory.

~ Bio by Connie Nisinger

J. Milton Turner School (1924-1975)

J. Milton Turner School had it origins as the Meacham Park School. It opened in 1924 as a direct response to the pressure black parents had been directing to the Kirkwood Board of Education since the end of World War I because of the obviously inadequate educational opportunities for black students in the district. A design for a one-story, four-room, wood-frame building was submitted as early as 1922 by William B Ittner, the leading school architect in the St. Louis region. Contracts were not awarded until March, 1924 because some parents complained that the funds could be better used to upgrade the Booker T. Washington School. Two rooms in the new building were equipped and opened before construction was completed, and a third opened in the fall of 1925. A bond issue in 1929 provided funds for the school's enlargement into an L-shaped building, with a second wood-frame wing.

In 1932, overcrowding at the Washington School caused the whole sixth grade to be transferred to the school in Meacham Park, which was renamed the J. Milton Turner School at that time. The advent of the New Deal the next year soon produced new sources of funding for schools, and the Kirkwood district was able to take advantage of them by constructing three new schools and to enlarging three other, including Turner. Plans for a brick addition much larger than the original building are dated January 1937, and the work was completed the following year. the original wood-frame building remained attached to the east side of the new building. The Bonsack and Pearce drawings from 1937 are titled "J. Milton Turner High School," but in fact, only the junior high grades were accommodated in the new building, and black students from Kirkwood continued to travel to high schools in other districts, notably the Douglass School in Webster Groves, until 1955. An old photo shows that the Turner School's south front was detailed similarly to the present building, but with blank ends instead of wings and a slightly narrower centerpiece.

The building was brought to its present size in 1948, with enough room to accommodate the whole elementary school. The wooden wing could then be demolished. All the black students in the district were transferred to the Turner School in 1950, and the Booker T. Washington School was then demolished, too. By this time, the nationwide movement to desegregate public schools was gaining strength, and Kirkwood parents filed suit in the United States District Court in December, 1950. That suit was being appealed four years later when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled decisively in Brown vs. Board of Education. Kirkwood moved rapidly to comply, but because of the continuing reliance of neighborhood school boundaries, Turner School remained predominantly black. finally in the midst of the 1975-76 school year, Turner's students were moved to another building inside the Kirkwood city limits and the building was closed.

An effort was then launched to turn the building into a museum and archives devoted to the life and times of J. Milton Turner, but the Board sold the school to an investment company in 1980.

-School history excerpt taken from the Narrative Statement of Significance on the Nation register of Historic Places Registration form, Continuation Sheet (page 5&6 of 8) prepared by Esley Hamilton of the St. Louis Count Dept. of Parks & Rec., December 19, 2000.