Our Cultural Resources team recently went above and beyond when providing mitigation for an adverse effect to a historic resource as part of Section 106 review. Working closely with the local community and MoDOT, the team produced a 40-minute documentary film titled, The Foot: A Community Remembered.
The Foot was an historic African-American neighborhood in Jefferson City, Missouri, where the heart of the black business and residential community was located from the early 1900s until the 1960s when highway construction and urban renewal efforts brought about its demise. Located at the foot of the hill that Lincoln University stands upon (a historically black college), this historic neighborhood is now a local Legacy Historic District where no buildings from the historic era survive.
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Gary Quigg, Lochmueller Group's Senior Cultural Resource Investigator, has produced a number of historical documentaries (including a PBS work that received an Emmy Award). With MoDOT’s approval, Gary and the Cultural Resources team captured the memories of former residents of the Foot on camera. Thus, the story of this historic black community is described in the memories of those who lived within it. Filled with archival footage and photographs accompanying the interviews, a narrative voice and music of the era, this documentary has begun to touch the hearts of Jefferson City.
In celebration of Black History Month, the premiere of the film was presented at the Thomas D. Pawley III Theater in Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall on February 26th at Lincoln University - just a block away from the historic “Foot” district. Lochmueller Group’s Gary Quigg, Hannah Blad, Bre Henderson, Erica Howard, Jason DuPont, and Scott J. Smith attended the event, as part of a standing-room-only crowd of over 200 in attendance Monday evening.
