ST. LOUIS — Ten-year-old Tyson Stegall stared intently at the chess board as his opponent, grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez, pondered a move. The fourth-grader gave a little grimace, then a smile, when Ramirez finished him off with a checkmate.
“He trapped me,” Tyson said.
Tyson is among dozens of students from the Ferguson, Missouri, area who have taken to chess over the past school year, part of a pilot program called Your Move Chess aimed at expanding young residents’ minds and helping them cope with what has been a troubling couple of years in the region. Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, drew national attention after 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in a 2014 police shooting there.
On May 24, 11 grade-schoolers from Walnut Grove Elementary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District gathered at the St. Louis Chess Club and Scholastic Center for a year-end celebration with T-shirts, certificates and a final set of matches, including one in which Ramirez played each student simultaneously.
The chess club is open to students in the predominantly black district’s 17 grade schools and three middle schools. Third-grade teacher Wyntra Storms, a mentor to the young chess players, said the unrest that followed Brown’s death was difficult on the kids. She said many still tear up when they talk about it.
The chess club is making a difference, helping rebuild their confidence, she said.
“They are learning to focus,” Storms said. “A lot of them, when we first mentioned chess, said, ‘I can’t do that. I’m not smart enough.’ They found out they could do it, and it really excites them.”
Brown, who was black and unarmed, was fatally shot during an Aug. 9, 2014, confrontation with Darren Wilson, a white police officer. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Wilson of criminal wrongdoing. He resigned in November 2014.
