Scott County

The plaque's towns leave out what happened at Sikeston in 1942. On January 25, 1942, Cleo Wright, a 26-year-old Black cotton mill worker arrested after a stabbing, was taken from the City Hall jail by a white mob of about 700, dragged behind a car into the Black neighborhood of Sunset Addition, and burned alive. After Japanese wartime propaganda seized on the killing, Attorney General Francis Biddle sent the FBI, the first federal investigation of a civil rights case, and it identified 20 lynchers. An all-white grand jury indicted no one. A memorial service was held in 2022.

What the plaque says

Scott County The second county formed in Missouri's famed Southeast Lowland Region, Scott was organized 1821, and named for John Scott, the State's first Congressman. Southerners were first settlers on Spanish land grants in the late 1790's. The King's Highway (El Camino Real), laid out in 1789, crossed the county which lies in territory claimed by Osage tribes until 1808. The Delaware and Shawnee roamed the area into the 1820's. Benton, the county seat, laid out in 1822, is named for Thomas Hart Benton, one of Missouri's first U.S. Senators. From 1864-78 the county seat was located at Commerce, a town laid out 1823 on Mississippi River. Long known as Tywappity, the townsite was a trading post and river landing by 1803. There was formed the first Baptist Church in what is now Missouri, 1805. New Hamburg, third town in the county, was settled by German immigrants in the 1840's. In St. Lawrence Catholic churchyard there is their first log church. Sikeston, the county's fourth and largest town, settled in 1800, was laid out in 1860, by John Sikes on the Cairo & Fulton R.R. (Mo. Pac.). (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1961 Scott County (Continued from other side) Scott County, cotton, soybean, melon, and grain producer, lies between the Mississippi and Little River District drainage ditches, one of largest drainage systems in the U.S., established 1905. Crowley's Ridge, remnant of an old coastal plain, crosses the county. The county, devastated by guerrilla raids during the Civil War, grew rapidly from the 1870's to the early 1900's as its dense forests were lumbered off and numerous railroads were built. Towns founded in this period are Diehlstadt, Morley, Oran, Perkins, Blodgett, Crowder, Vanduser, Illmo, Fornfelt (Scott City), Chaffee, Ancell, and Kelso. The Thebes Mississippi River railroad bridge at Illmo dates from 1905. Near there is Cape St. Croix, a rock island in the river where Father De Montigny erected a cross, 1699. Near Morley is the grave of Nathaniel W. Watkins, State legislator, Gen. Missouri State Guards, half-brother of Henry Clay. In the county for a time, lived Wilson Brown, 9th Lt. Gov. of Mo., and noted early legislators Joseph Hunter II and Abraham Hunter. Rezin Bowie, brother of James, was Syndic of Tywappity settlement before 1800. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1961

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bollinger Mill State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A four-story mill of 1867 on an 1825 stone foundation on the Whitewater River, beside Missouri's oldest covered bridge, where farmers broke down the toll gates in 1906.
• Trail of Tears State Park — 24 mi
  Rugged river hills north of Cape Girardeau where nine of the thirteen Cherokee detachments crossed the Mississippi in the winter of 1838 and 1839, and where floating ice left them camped on both banks.

More markers nearby

• Cape Girardeau — 17 mi
• Stoddard County — 25 mi
• Marble Hill — 27 mi