My great grandfather, Wayman Alexander Denson, was born on January 21, 1896 in Lauderdale, Alabama to John and Charlotte Denson. He was the middle of three sons and the father of three children. He moved to Newport, Arkansas with his mother and two brothers in the late 1910s. He moved to St. Louis in the 1930s and worked as a custodian for the Jewish Hospital. He remained in the St. Louis area until his death in 1959.

I never heard my Granny talk about her parents. The first time I saw a picture of him was when I started researching our family back in 2011. The only thing I knew about his is that my father was named after him. I have been able to get to know my great grandfather through my research and that includes finding newspaper articles. I have found two letters to the editor that he wrote in the St. Louis Dispatch in the 1950s. One letter was about his thoughts on the injustices of segregation in St. Louis and why it should be ended. The second letter was about his feelings about being charged for taking his infant child to the movies with him. I love that he wanted his voice and his opinions heard by the city. It tells me that he was a man of confidence and on the right side of civil rights for our country. I’m anxious to learn more about his other points of view and actions he took during through my research.