Black America caught fire in 1968. Ignited by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and fueled by a lingering racism, the fire spread through black communities across the country. While the nation burned in 1968, the St. Joseph black community simmered. The racial tensions and tragedies in the rest of the country didn’t boil over here until 1969. And then it took the death of Richard Marvin Ginn, a black youth shot dead by a white St. Joseph police officer, to set it off.

“It was complacent, nothing going on. Nothing happened until Richard got shot,” said John Lucas Jr. “(Before) there were people complaining about things happening in Kansas City and all over the country and talking about why we don’t have this or that.”

Ramadhan Washington, a local community activist then and now, said it’s hard to separate 1968 from 1969. In St. Joseph, the two years ran together.

“Everything was like it had a snowballing effect, which started with the assassination of Martin Luther King,” Mr. Washington said. “Richard Marvin’s death just added more fuel to the fire. His death just heightened and made more awareness, more action to do things, building our own, instead of talking about it.”

Mr. Washington said before 1968, St. Joseph dealt with its racial issues in a mostly non-threatening manner. The late Kelsy Beshears, a legendary St. Joseph civil rights icon, led peaceful sit-ins and marches to end segregated lunch counters and movie theaters in the 1950s.

It helped that black businesses thrived too. Before integration, there were black doctors, dentists, barbershops, stores and bars along Messanie Street, Missouri Avenue and Second Street.

“We had our own, so it wasn’t a problem,” Mr. Washington said. “The problem was when your own is taken away from you and you have to settle for something else. That something else said you’re not welcome, and that’s where the problem was.”

The death of Martin Luther King in April 1968 stirred up some of that unease. Doug Hughes doesn’t remember any riots in St. Joseph as a result of the assassination but recalls some muted anger.

“In St. Joe, it really wasn’t a whole lot of anything,” he said. “Only thing is, we did have a memorial service ... just a few things going on, a few windows broken, some people letting off a little anger.”

That anger came to a head on the Friday evening of March 15, 1969. Twenty- year-old Richard Marvin Ginn was killed by a single police officer’s bullet after he fled from the scene of a disturbance at 17th and Messanie streets.

There were conflicting reports on whether or not the police officer shot Mr. Ginn in self-defense. Black residents requested an inquest into the shooting death, which then-city prosecuting attorney Hugh Sprague denied. This outraged some members of the black community, who showed their dissatisfaction with a school walkout and protest at City Hall.

A front-page story in the March 18, 1969, St. Joseph News-Press said “nineteen black students walked out of Central High school at 9:30 a.m. ... with the assertion the walkout was to indicate their support for an inquest into the death of Richard Ginn.”

“They basically said it was a police officer doing his job in the line of duty,” Mr. Hughes said. “We were trying to get the city to do an inquest so the police officer would be reprimanded in some sort of way.”

Other than a few more broken windows and some random fires, little else went on in St. Joseph. There would be no inquest. However, as a result of all the turmoil, the groundwork was laid for a new black awareness. Plans for a youth center to be named the Richard Marvin Ginn Youth Center also grew from that awareness. It eventually became the East Side Human Resource Center and today is the Bartlett Center.

St. Joseph educator Leo Blakely was one of the founders and original board members of the center. He remembers little, if any, violence at the time.

“I just recall there was nothing like what it was nationwide,” he said. “It was more of a ‘What can we do to help?’”

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.