Post-Dispatch City Hall reporter Jake Wagman wrote his most balanced appraisal thus far of Mayor Francis G. Slay in a piece that led the Sunday Metro section, but he left out the detail about Slay that has been most telling for the black community.
Wagman summarized the demotion of Fire Chief Sherman George by saying “Slay’s public safety director demoted George, the first African-American to ever lead the department, later replacing him with a white chief.” Wagman adds, “The episode has turned into a racial flash point,” but he leaves out a crucial detail that does much to explain why Slay’s treatment of George proved so explosive.
Wagman mentions “Slay’s public safety director” without naming names, but their were two public safety directors involved, and their identities and roles are crucial. Sam Simon, the mayor’s cousin, was the public safety director who worked with the mayor’s office and Department of Personnel to undermine George. Simon then publicly set a deadline for George to make the contested promotions, or face disciplinary action. Simon then abruptly resigned, landing at Saint Louis University.
Slay appointed a black City Hall staffer with no executive experience, Charles Bryson, to replace his cousin as public safety director – with the deadline hanging over George’s head. On the day he was appointed, Bryson announced that he would enforce the deadline. In the end, a qualified black leader (George) was demoted by an unqualified black operative (Bryson) who had been promoted specifically to wield the hatchet after the execution date had been set (by the mayor’s cousin).
That was the “flash point.” The Post does nothing to enable its readers to understand that.
Slay’s leadership in this crucial situation sent all the wrong messages to the black community. Even going by the book like Sherman George doesn’t get you ahead in this administration, in this city – doing what you are told, regardless of the cost, is all that is rewarded. That message made black St. Louis (and many allies of all kinds) lose their collective patience.
Slay got traction in the mainstream from the argument that George simply didn’t do what his boss told him to do, and that gets you disciplined. This argument has not helped him in the black community. Though we believe such connections must be made with care, the history of slavery is a critical subtext here. The black community has in its historical memory a much, much lower degree of debasement associated with being told what to do by a superior, whatever you may think about it and whatever your sense of justice. We do not stand easily for the evocation of memories of slavery and its management tactics.
People who are not black and who do not follow this argument will simply never understand the reality of more than half of the people who live in the city of St. Louis.
We understand Francis Slay never owned any slaves (though Sherman George did pick cotton as a child in the Missouri Bootheel, a fact that contributes to his moral authority in the black community). We also understand that many non-black people shut down when slavery is offered as a context to help explain any current situation. But the context is critical here.
The reason resentment at the treatment of Sherman George flashed outside of the expected black activists to include the middle and even executive classes of black St. Louis also relates to work patterns with roots in slavery. Sherman George was by no one’s judgment a “field slave.” He worked in the equivalent of the Big House. He had worked hard to get there. He had played by the rules, and he had won by the rules. He and his lawyer will soon argue in court that he continued to play by the rules, until the end. In return, George was undermined, insulted in public and demoted.
When someone who has earned his way into The Big House gets the equivalent of the brutal whipping customarily dealt out to field slaves, then no one on the plantation knows what to expect now. Trust in leadership could be damaged beyond repair. The black community has expressed its feeling of insult and anger, but the mayor dismisses it. He admits no error and expresses no contrition. The Post called the response to Chief George’s demotion a “racial flash point,” but since we have no choice but to deal with race at all times, we see this more as a “leadership crisis flash point.” It continues to burn.