Fifty years ago, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared to march on Washington, D.C. and deliver his historic “I Have a Dream” speech to over 300,000 black E. St. Louis protestors were engaged in their own showdown for jobs and justice.
We’ve often heard of the legendary St. Louis Jefferson Bank & Trust demonstrations, which lasted two months.
However, the inspiration for that protest was birthed in the bowels of black E. St. Louis, back in July 1963, when over 200 African-Americans marched on ESL City Hall, demanding jobs.
And that was just the beginning of a series of “lie-ins”, “pray-ins” and other acts of civil disobedience, which would disrupt and disturb the ESL power structure during the long hot summer of 1963.
At that time black unemployment in ESL was triple that of white residents (about 30 percent) and race relations were still badly damaged as the result of the race massacre of July 1917 in which blacks were savagely beaten and murdered.
So, in August 1963, black ESL protestors targeted downtown banking institutions which, at the time, employed less than ten percent blacks, with those jobs being mainly custodial positions.
The initial focus, on August 12, 1963, was the First National Bank where approximately 50 protestors locked arms and marched inside the lobby, blocking the tellers’ counter.
After refusing to disperse, ESL Police Chief George Dowling ordered officers to arrest the protestors. Forty seven were arrested and then released without having to post bond. Soon, thereafter, nineteen protestors returned to the bank, only to be rearrested.
As a compromise, bank executives offered 20 part-time “training jobs” at nine banks. The protestors demanded 50 full-time positions.
The result was a standoff, with First National Bank president Oliver Breidecker refusing to bend and NAACP field representative James Peake turning up the heat.
On August 14, protestors conducted “pray-ins” outside ESL banks and on August 15 over 200 protestors entered First National Bank, this time laying down while chanting and singing “We shall not be moved”.
This prompted ESL police to commandeer Bi-State buses for use as makeshift paddy wagons to haul protestors to jail, with teen protestors being transported to the local National Guard armory.
Then, on August 16, after a court injunction against protestors and negotiations with City Hall, Rex Carr, the banks’ attorney, and the NAACP announced a deal to give 7 full-time and 13 part-time clerical jobs to blacks.
The protests then moved to their next targets: the Illinois Power Company and ESL supermarkets.
That inspired protests across the Mississippi River, with blacks picketing the Jefferson Bank on August 30, 1963.
And a half century later, somehow, the ESL victory rings somewhat bittersweet as, within the next decade following those historic events, white flight and economic decline decimated ESL’s infrastructure and population taking it from a thriving city of 82,000 to one of barely 30,000 today.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com Twitter@JamesTIngram
