The first African American family has been living in the White House for a couple of years now. So it may be a bit hard to believe that there’s been a 107-year gap between the time the Obamas took up residence in the White House and the year – 1901– when the first African American was formally invited (by then-president Theodore Roosevelt) to simply visit the place. That guest was Booker T. Washington – born a slave, fathered by a white man he never knew, a child who hungered for knowledge more than he hungered for anything else in life. His drive to become educated, and to foster education for other African Americans, led to his founding the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 in Alabama, which he built into an internationally-respected center of learning. The author of Up from Slavery went on to advise three US presidents, win an honorary degree from Harvard and become recognized as the country’s foremost black educator.

Missouri has a rich heritage of African American history and tourists to the state are being encouraged to explore it along with the state’s more well known attractions. In an effort to attract African Americans, campaigns from the Missouri Division of Tourism and the efforts of experts like Angela daSilva of the National Black Tourism Network (a full service travel company that specializes in tours of the African Diaspora) highlight the history and rich heritage of African Americans in Missouri.