County of church: Warren County
Location of cemetery: MO Hwy J, near Rugh Manor, Wright City
Number of graves: 250+
Cemetery created: 1869
Church founded 1843
Current Church built: 1990
"At Wesley-Smith Chapel, dressed in their Sunday best, members were singing hymns, including old spirituals.
'"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen; Nobody knows but Jesus."
"On Sunday, the church walls were decorated with photos of current and former members — including veterans of the Civil War.
"There was George Calvin Martin Wyatt, a gray-haired man with a thick mustache and one hand on his dog, according to the yellowing newspaper clipping. Wyatt helped build the original church building in 1873. He was 106 when he died about 1939, a former slave in Lincoln County and a Civil War veteran.
"Several church members still remember him.
'"I just remember him being a real old man and that he lived by a creek," said Gladys Ball, a longtime member. "He was a great old man."
"Wyatt's granddaughter, Marie Sydnor, 88, said her grandfather didn't talk a lot.
'"He did talk about how, when he was a slave, they'd beat him until he was sore, then they'd rub salt in his wounds," she said.
"A large part of the history of African-American people in Warren County walked through the doors of Wesley-Smith United Methodist Church or the two churches that comprise its 140 years of history. The church celebrated Black History Month with a program Sunday.
"Ball has a story for most of the pictures hanging on the wall at Wesley-Smith Chapel, on Highway J just north of Wright City.
"There was Brance Sydnor, pictured in a black-and-white photo wearing work clothes and boots. His mother and father were born slaves and then sharecroppers near Troy.
'"He was the first black man to collect the trash in Wright City," Ball said. "He drove a horse and wagon. Then, when he stopped, my husband's father (Hobert Ball) took over. He had a truck."
"The church's history and cemetery are full of names such as Ball, Sydnor, Luckett and Wyatt.
'"We're all related in one way or another here," said Ball, who laughed. She is 80, has a scarf tied around her head and is working at the church. She could pass for 60. Her mother, Frances Sydnor, lived to be 104.
'"She was still working, cleaning house at 104," Ball said. "I made her quit. I told her, 'You're 104. You shouldn't be working.' A month after she quit, she died. I should have let her keep on going."
"Frances Sydnor's father, Frank Welch, was one of the men who built the original church, a one-room log building, alongside her Uncle Cal, Ball said.
"The old church that many of them built by hand was on the same property as the current Wesley-Smith Chapel, just down Highway J a bit.
'"When we tore that old church building down, you could tell they cut those logs down by hand," said Donald Luckett, a church member who grew up attending Smith United Methodist Church in Foristell. "Some of those logs were still in pretty good shape. But those men built everything by hand from scratch."
"Smith United Methodist merged with Wesley Chapel in 1976. But Luckett figures he's been at the same church his whole life. He lives in Wentzville, but he's at Wesley-Smith every Sunday.
"Luckett said he hated coming to church as a child, but his mother made him.
'"Now I come because I want to," he said. All those things his mother and other church members said make sense now.
'"All those men — Hobert Ball, George Wyatt, Charlie Luckett — they were great workmen in the church," he said. "The church never wanted for anything because of them. They'd pay out of their own pocket if necessary. They gave everything to the church."
"Now, Luckett is there every Sunday, helping care for the church.
"Church members provided lots of "firsts" for African-Americans in Warren County. Charlie Luckett was the first African-American to live inside the Wright City limits. Betty Brown, who taught at Gibson Elementary, a school for blacks, became the first African-American to teach in the Wentzville School District in 1962.
"Gibson Elementary still stands on Highway J, but it's a private residence now. The school for blacks near the old Smith church in Foristell still stands, too.
"Not all of the Wesley-Smith members who made history were in the cemetery out back. Yvonne Harrison and Weldon Ball, the first African-American woman and man to graduate from Wright City High School, spoke Sunday.
"It was right after Brown vs. the Board of Education integrated schools. Harrison was among the first African-Americans to enter Wright City schools that year. A couple of years later, in 1957, she was the first African-American graduate.
'"I was the only black person to graduate that year, because unless you had a lot of fortitude and determination, people just quit," said Harrison, who still lives in Wright City. "Fortunately, my mother told me, 'You are going to get that slip of paper (high school diploma).'"
"She said she didn't get to go on the senior class trip because the hotel in Florida didn't allow African-Americans.
'"As a result, I made sure my daughter and I did go places," she said. "We've been all over the country, to Canada, Mexico — whatever the scenes were on the calendar that I thought were pretty."
"Memories of discrimination hurt, but what hurts more is seeing a younger generation that takes things for granted, Harrison said.
'"Those doors to the school are open because someone went through pain and humiliation to open them," she said.
"Weldon Ball graduated in 1960, the first African-American man to do so.
'"There were others ahead of me, but they quit because they got disgusted," he said.
"He had a scholarship offer from a university in Oklahoma to play basketball.
'"I was a star on the team," Weldon Ball said. "I had a 25-point average, and I had a scholarship down in Tahlequah, Okla."
"He was breaking school records. Then, near the end of the season, a teammate came up to him and told him the other players decided they would not pass him the ball.
'"I asked him, 'What about you?'" Weldon Ball said. "He said, 'I'm holding out, too. Those are my friends.'
'"After not getting any passes the first half, I changed out of my uniform," he said. "I watched them get their butts kicked."
"He lost the scholarship because he quit the team, he said.
"Harrison said she wants to focus on the positive, she said.
'"Because I had a hard time, I'm an advocate for education," she said.
"A big part of that education still comes through church.
"The church's pastor, the Rev. Doug Kraus, is white and also is pastor for the predominantly white Open Arms Church in Wright City.
'"The men's groups and the women's groups from both churches have been working together," he said. "The youth from both churches have gone on mission trips together. That's a change in history. That's never happened before.
'"But we're a long way to go before we're looking at each other by the content of our character instead of the color of our skin."' ~ St. Charles County Suburban Journal, by Joe Scott, 25 Feb. 2009