The State Historical Society of Missouri selected Dr. Patrick Huber, a Missouri University of Science and Technology history professor for one of two fellowships in the Center for Missouri Studies for 2015.

Huber earned the fellowship from a pool of 35 applicants for his proposal, “Remembering the Ste. Genevieve Race Riot of 1930: Historical Memory and the Expulsion of African Americans from a Small Missouri Town.” A Ste. Genevieve native, Huber plans to examine a four-day disturbance, long shrouded in secrecy, in which vigilantes drove away most of the town’s black residents, many of whom were recent arrivals recruited to work in local lime kilns and stone quarries.

“As a historian, I believe it is important for Americans today to reckon with uncomfortable elements of their past, especially in regard to race relations,” Huber says. “I want to use this event to better understand how historical episodes of racial violence in small towns are remembered and understood in contemporary America.”

He will write a scholarly essay of 6,000 to 8,000 words for publication in the Missouri Historical Review, the quarterly journal of the State Historical Society of Missouri, and make a public presentation of his work in 2015 in Missouri on a date and location to be determined. The fellowship award includes a stipend of $5,000.

Huber has written four books and co-edited a book about Hank Williams, The Hank Williams Reader. In 2000 he began teaching in the history and political science department at Missouri S&T, where he specializes in Missouri history, the American South and 20th century U.S. history.

The Center for Missouri Studies extends the State Historical Society’s mission to promote and disseminate the study of the state’s history and culture.

Washington University in St. Louis Ph.D. candidate Taylor Desloge also earned a fellowship for his proposal, “‘Jim Crow Is No Barrier’: Housing, Tuberculosis and the ‘New Public Health’ Roots of Urban Renewal in Black St. Louis, 1920–1940.”