Isn’t it marvelous how the St. Louis American has grown and prospered over our lifetimes??
Every week as I read this great newspaper’s pages, I am particularly thankful that I got to personally know and learn from one of the newspaper’s dynamic founding fathers: the legendary Judge, Nathan B. Young, Jr.
Quite frankly, as a proud student of history, I had to reacquaint myself with the names of Judge Young’s cohorts who got the “American” up and running way back in 1928. We should all learn the full names that go along with the surnames: Procope, Turpin, Phillips, Clarke, Kent, Watts, Harris, and Curtis. These pioneers are responsible for the startup of the great and classy newspaper you’re reading right now. And my friend, Judge Young, drew up the incorporation documents that launched The American.
I think I’ve figured out what the founders of the St. Louis American came to realize 95 years ago: The major local newspapers were not about to tell the Black community what was really going on in the real world. If controversial news was published at all back then, you better believe it was heavily filtered, censored and biased. Whitewashed.
And trying to get inside the heads of Judge Young and the founders, I figured out something else: the then seven-year-old St. Louis Argus newspaper could not begin to handle the heavy flow of news that nearly 40,000 African American St. Louisans wanted, suspected… and needed to know way back then.
What the St. Louis American founders knew for sure was that the City’s African Americans wanted — or needed — some answers on why Black unemployment was nearly double that of whites. A new Black-owned newspaper in 1928 St. Louis needed to come to grips with why the so-called “Great Migration” was pouring Blacks into town in record numbers as they fled
the South nearly one hundred years ago. And how should St. Louis, with its Jim Crow laws and abysmal approach to Black-hiring, handle the mighty flood of African Americans arriving in St. Louis homeless and jobless?
And WHAM!! The year after the St. Louis American was born, the Great Depression hit everybody. Black Americans hardest.
A new Black-owned newspaper needed to figure out if there were more talented and ambitious African Americans like Young and attorney Homer G. Phillips that would need a new newspaper’s strong editorial backing to tackle growing economic problems.
And I’ll bet you the founders wondered aloud if St. Louis’ Black population was even remotely aware of the bloody race riots and lynchings that had taken place just across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis in 1917. The newspaper founders had more than a good notion that as many as 150 Black East St. Louisans were murdered that year in race rioting and lynchings! Right in St. Louis’ backyard!!!!
The founders could see by just venturing across the Eads Bridge that as many as 6,000 Black E. St. Louisans were left homeless by the 1917 race riots. And while a new Black-owned and operated newspaper had no way of calculating the amount of destruction 95 years ago, modern day reckoning puts property damage from the E. St. Louis race riots at a startling $9 million in today’s dollars.
In 1928, most Black St. Louisans were not mobile enough… nor aware enough… to see what a new newspaper’s reporters and editors could see and then dare print on its young pages. And surely the St. Louis American founders had to wonder aloud among themselves if St. Louis was next on the racist terrorists’ hit list.
So, the St. Louis American had one helluva job to do! Starting with its first editions 95-years ago.
And while printing up details of the E. St. Louis race riots… the St. Louis American staff began piecing together the stories of brutal, bloodyrace riots just a decade earlier than the St. Louis American first went topress. How many Black St. Louisans had ever heard about or read aboutwhat came to be called the Red Summer of 1919?
For the KKK and other racists, Black lives had begun to matter too much in Washington, D.C. Knoxville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; Phillips County, Arkansas; Omaha, and Chicago. Lynchings, murders, pillaging and plundering of Black lives, unfortunately, became the St. Louis American’s first headlines, feature stories and editorials.
Birthday congratulations should end on a lighter, happier note, shouldn’t they? So, here’s the scoop on how I had the rare honor of sitting with Judge Nathan B. Young, Jr.. several times in his infamously, incomparably cluttered basement den. How’d I get the invitation?
I copied the Old Judge’s style he exhibited in founding this newspaper. I invited myself. He graciously accepted the reverse invitation.
Surrounded by piles of yellowed documents and clippings and watercolor and oil paintings he created, I sat for several spellbinding sessions in the “catacomb” in the 5100 block of Northland. (Fortunately for us all, much of the priceless “clutter” has been cataloged and preserved by St. Louis University.)
Judge Young clued me in on some inside scoops. He shared with me his theories
on why his friend Homer G. Phillips, was gunned down and murdered while waiting for a streetcar at Delmar and Aubert.
That was just three years after the promising Attorney Phillips co-founded this newspaper you’re reading right now! No convictions ever for the murder, but Judge Young had his informed theories. And as I sat spellbound on other visits, Judge Young colorfully rattled off the true, behind-the-scenes stories of the legendary real-life characters, “Stagger Lee” and “Frankie and Johnny.”
Then one day after the Judge brushed off a pile of papers covering his rinky-tinky upright piano in that hallowed basement, he had a surprise for my then teenage daughter, Jennifer. With a flair he showed her how to correctly play the “left hand stride” that makes Ragtime music unique. Just as the energetic lawyer was instrumental in getting the St. Louis American off the ground 95-years ago, he was just as enthusiastic about lighting a spark to get a young musician’s interest in Ragtime fired up. An inspired Jennifer can now play fourteen Scott Joplin pieces by heart. With fond personal memories of a founder’s reflections…
HAPPY 95th BIRTHDAY, ST. LOUIS AMERICAN!!!
