For nearly two hours Monday night, officials and leading citizens of Kirkwood explained a mediation agreement they had reached last month and beseeched the crowd of about 100 people in a Meacham Park church to let go of the racial discrimination of the past and move ahead.

At times the crowd of citizens from across Kirkwood fell almost silent as they listened to the officials and citizens involved in the Justice Department mediation explain their agreement and answer written questions challenging its scope and effectiveness. Public statements from the audience were not permitted.

But the meeting ended with Harriet Patton, the most prominent leader in Meacham Park, rising to challenge statements made by the officials. The crowd dispersed with Patton and other Meacham Park leaders accusing mediator C.J. Larkin of Washington University Law School and Mayor Art McDonnell of making misleading statements.

The Meacham Park group, calling itself the Kirkwood Coalition for Equality, released a proposal for strengthening the mediation agreement by creating a Department of Human Rights, a civilian police review board and an advisory committee to promote economic and job development to overcome the "social and physical isolation of the Meacham Park neighborhood."

The meeting was the second and last that the city scheduled to present the mediation agreement to the community and answer questions. At this meeting, like the first last month at City Hall, citizens were required to submit questions in writing and were not allowed to make statements from the audience -- a restriction that had critics chafing.

Thornton shooting led to mediation process

The mediation process began after the Feb. 7, 2008, City Hall shootings in which Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton killed city officials and was himself killed by police. Thornton was an African American from Meacham Park with racial grievances against City Hall. The six city officials who died were white. The mediation process -- under which the Justice Department brought together a team of city officials with a team of community representatives -- was aimed at "perceived racial issues in the community."

City officials and African-Americans on the citizen team exhorted the audience to move beyond the history of racial discrimination. "We can't dig in the mud on our history," said Charles Howard, one of the African-American members of the mediation effort. "We got to go on because if we don't people are going to pass us by."

Howard said the redevelopment of Meacham Park had helped residents fix up their houses and buy where they had been renting. "If you don't see the improvement in the black community now, you will never see it," he said.

Ron Hodges, another black leader, said, "It's time to quit pointing fingers and quit blaming the city. When we decide we are going to look after our neighborhood, we will be better off."

Police Chief Jack Plummer, who's white, was asked how the mediation agreement would have stopped an incident in which a youth was shot in the neck. "The mediation agreement won't fix that," he responded bluntly. "One on one, eye to eye is how we are going to make this better," he said.

A questioner suggested the mayor assign two city council members to Meacham Park. McDonnell, who's white, said he could do that, but said that wasn't his vision. "What we envision is for the whole community," he said. "We're a whole city ... not this little section and this little section. We are all together."

Mike Brown, longtime chief administrative officer for the city, was asked about former Mayor Robert Reim's 1966 quote that Kirkwood was "equally guilty with surrounding cities and St. Louis County in creating a ghetto-like effect in Meacham Park through neglect (and) discrimination."

"That is past," Brown said. "You have to let go of that. ... It's history. We can't forget it but we have to move on."

By contrast, the Meacham Park community called upon the city to include Reim's quotation in the mediation agreement to "provide a more accurate description of the situation both past and present" and to counter city officials' statements that the city doesn't have a race problem.

Meacham Park residents offer counter proposal

The Meacham Park group's counter-proposal would go further than the mediation agreement in strengthening the city's Human Rights Commission. The counter-proposal calls for creation of a Department of Human Rights with a trained professional staff including an independent ombudsman. The staff would administer the new online complaint service and place complaints before the proper city agency. By contrast, the mediation agreement does not provide for a trained staff, nor does it empower the Human Rights Commission to investigate complaints.

The counter-proposal also proposes a civilian review board to receive and investigate complaints against the police and to recommend disciplinary action in cases involving discrimination of any kind. Some cities around the nation have such civilian review boards. The Meacham Park group also wants an advisory committee to develop a plan for "restaurants, recreational facilities, roller rinks, barber shops, hair salons (and) jazz venues" to overcome racial and social isolation. A polling place in Meacham Park also would bring residents from other Kirkwood neighborhoods into the community and ease social isolation, the group said.

In answer to a question about why the school district had not been involved in the mediation process, Mayor McDonnell said the city didn't have control over the schools. But he added, "We do encourage the school district to be conscientious and to look at issues they might have." McDonnell said he was encouraged that the new superintendent, Thomas L. Williams, would take action.

Larkin, the Washington University lecturer who was involved in the mediation process, tried to explain why the process had not included an investigation of complaints from Meacham Park residents. She said that Bill Whitcomb, the Justice Department official who oversaw the mediation, could best answer the question. But she said that she didn't think there had been a request for an investigation.

Patton rose at the end of the meeting to challenge Larkin directly. She presented a copy of an April 2008 request for an investigation "to prove or disprove Cookie Thornton's allegations of harassment from the city of Kirkwood." Meacham Park residents also submitted other complaints that say they thought were be investigated as part of theJustice Department process, Patton said.

Meacham Park residents also challenged McDonnell's statement that the city had not received a registered letter from the group rejecting the mediation agreement. They said they had the receipt showing the letter had been delivered.

Patton and her group want a small planning committee created before the end of March to work on ways to strengthen the mediation agreement. McDonnell made no commitments.