Rock Center

Spiva Center for the Arts is displaying an art exhibit title Joplin's East Town: A Legacy Revealed© curated by S. Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin©.  Members of the Rock Center Coalition worked behind the scenes to help make this happen. Stay tuned for future events that continue to reveal hidden history. 

Joplin’s East Town: A Legacy Revealed©

Spiva Center for the Arts

August 2 – August 23, 2025

Jo Mueller Reserve Gallery

Reception: August 7, 2025 | 5:30-7:30pm

Exhibition Information

Joplin’s East Town: A Legacy Revealed©

Spiva Center for the Arts 

212 West 7th Street  

Joplin, MO 64801

https://spivaarts.org

An Exhibition by S. Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin© & Invited Artists

East Town: A Legacy Revealed is an invitation. To view. To remember. To understand. To honor. This moment will not happen again in this place. 

East Town: A Legacy Revealed an exhibition although intimate offers a profound and immersive look into the often-overlooked history of the African American community of Joplin, Missouri, and its surroundings. This is more than an intimate art exhibition. It is a reclamation of history, a tribute to legacy, and a bold declaration of presence. Its essence lives within those of us rooted in this community.

The exhibition curated by Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, a fifth-generation Missourian and daughter of East Town, who’s nationally acclaimed work as a textile artist, painter, designer, and former curator of the American Jazz Museum gives this exhibition its depth and purpose, East Town: A Legacy Revealed is rooted in lived experiences—not folklore. It is personal. It is truth. And it is long overdue.

Joining Thompson-Ruffin in this visual narrative are renowned visual artists Charles Bibbs, Michael Brantley, Larry (Poncho) Brown, Dean Mitchell, Charles Harbin, Anthony High, Jason Piggie, Jason Wilcox and Huey Freedman aka Arthur X ©,— creatives whose artistry and commitment to cultural preservation elevate this exhibition to a place of deep reverence. Their works add bold perspective to the themes of legacy, place, and African American excellence. Through curated textiles, paintings, photography, and mixed media, the exhibition illuminates moments and milestones that helped shape Joplin’s African American community known as East Town.

As it continues to evolve, the exhibition will grow in imagery and depth—developing into future installations that will travel carrying with them the many voices and lived experiences of the East Town community, including those that have grown and flourished far beyond Joplin’s borders n to the world.

When historians or institutions want history to disappear, they don’t need to burn books—they simply refuse to write them. They silence experiences and stories by omitting them from archives, classrooms, monuments, and museum walls. The past is preserved only for some, while others are erased. African Americans did not begin in East Town as it is fondly called, the actual African American community of Joplin, began on Main Street. East Town is both a product of federal redlining policies and the original settlement of Joplin, Missouri—shaped by systems of exclusion, yet rooted in African American presence from the very beginning. This is not accidental. It is strategic.

The African American community of Joplin built neighborhoods, founded churches and schools, opened and operated businesses, raised generations, and forged enduring legacies. Yet when we look for their experiences and contributions in public records, textbooks, or historical tours, we find negative silence where truth should live.

The people that are elevated as our heroes are comfortably chosen, while our lived experiences and heroes are reduced to anecdotes—diminished, dismissed, and made optional in civic memory. But we are not optional. We are not temporary. We are essential.

—The proud history of the Black Seven mine owners, two of whom Thompson-Ruffin knew personally, as senior people in the community and one to whom she is directly related, yet they were silenced in their ability to share their experiences. 

—The quiet orchestration of school desegregation and the painful closing of Lincoln School, which once stood as a beacon of education and pride now a metal plaque in the ground. 

Several homes in East Town are listed in the now-famous Green Book, offering refuge and hospitality to African American travelers during segregation. The neighborhood welcomed Negro Leagues greats like John “Buck” O’Neil—who was a friend of my parents and later a mentor in my life—and jazz icon Clark Terry, a dear friend of my father’s. East Town was not just a community; it was a cultural haven where legends visited, and found it to be their home away from home.

And yet, there were allies—those who understood all too well the actions of their community counterparts who lacked empathy toward a community they tried to dismantle and destroy. Their acts of kindness were enormous and became an integral part of the life and legacy of East Town, today.

Ewert Park was a gift—donated by a person who recognized the power of education, inclusion, access, and fellowship. It was a vital space: home to an amphitheater where Territory bands came to play, a swimming pool, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, barbecue gatherings, spirited Bid Whist games, dominos and Negro League baseball games. The Newburger House was a gift from a family who had endured losses few could ever fully comprehend—yet the generosity of their hearts guided their decision to give.

The Newburger House, later became home to Carver Nursery School, served as both an early learning center and a beloved gathering place for the East Town community. The Negro Service Center another donated facility included also became the USO location for African American soldiers, NAACP meetings, and provided a space where Black social clubs could meet, organize, and grow.

The historic African American churches—cornerstones of spiritual, civic, and cultural life—stood strong, held together by those who understood the truth of community and the urgency of legacy.

The sacred annual Fourth of August Celebration at historic Ewert Park is a day of joy, food, music, and remembrance—gathering generations of families since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. However, it was not the first organized celebration in Joplin. Though the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and enforced in 1865, it would take another 100 years before Black people were truly granted access to the ballot. The 15th Amendment may have given Black men the legal right to vote, but it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that those rights were protected in practice. Even today, voter suppression continues to challenge the Black community’s full participation in democracy.

—The legendary Negro League baseball players, celebrated Women’s softball team, and the American Legion baseball team. Renown jazz musicians, educators, Fulbright scholar, Buffalo Soldiers, Tuskegee Airmen, literary genius, park ranger and pioneering civic leaders who built East Town’s enduring legacy yet only one viewpoint has been shared. 

Joplin’s African American history is not a footnote—it is a foundation for those that lived and flourished there. It is present in every jazz note that once spilled from porches, in the scent of barbecue that filled the East town streets, in the swing of a bat, the sermons from pulpits, and the chalk dust of classrooms that no longer exist.

This exhibition confronts the silence that has long surrounded East Town. It declares that the contributions, sacrifices, and triumphs of its African American citizen’s matter—and must be preserved. This is not nostalgia; it is cultural memory in motion. It is a visual chorus of resistance, reverence, and remembrance.

It has often been stated that the African American history of Joplin has yet to be written. But we have always been here. Did you think to ask or did you assume that we all just vanished into thin air as it has been shared. 

As Thompson-Ruffin writes:

“My family has been in Joplin for over 115 years. It was the birthplace of my father and siblings. Many of the homes are gone. The neighborhoods have changed. The land has been redeveloped. Yet the spirit—that spirit—lives.”

We carry it with us wherever we go. We know who we are—and we know the community we come from. It is a legacy that will live on in truth, memory, and purpose.

An Exhibition by Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin© & Invited Artists

Artists List

Artists Statements & Bio’s

Charles Bibbs

Larry Poncho Brown

Michael Brantley 

Anthony High

Charles Harbin

Jason Piggie 

Dean Mitchell

Sara Sonié Joi Thompson- Ruffin 

Jason Wilcox