When he moved back home here 12 years ago, the Rev. Moses Berry wanted to settle down to small-town life with his wife and two children. He did not intend to become a one-man racial reconciliation committee.<\/p>\n
But some residents of this nearly all-white, rural town of 1,400 people 15 miles west of Springfield say that he has done just that.<\/p>\n
By founding a black history museum here, cleaning up his family\u2019s cemetery and telling his family\u2019s sometimes controversial story, beginning with its roots in slavery, Father Moses, as everyone calls him \u201d\u201d an African-American, Orthodox Christian priest in a flowing black cassock \u201d\u201d has tried to remind people of a part of the region\u2019s often-forgotten past, and to open up hearts and minds along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brings peace to people. I\u2019ve seen it,\u201d\u009d said Gail Emrie, 56, a local history buff who helped get the Berry family\u2019s 135-year-old cemetery \u201d\u201d one of the region\u2019s few black cemeteries not located on a plantation \u201d\u201d listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. \u201cIt is reconciliation, and it is his mission, reconciliation of our history between the races.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n