Millions around the country recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In St. Louis last week, activists marked the 50th anniversary of an historic local civil rights milestone, the Jefferson Bank & Trust protests.
Civil rights activists Norman R. Seay, his brother Kenneth Webb and Percy Green II were key organizers of the protests. In August 1963, they and hundreds of others in the African-American community challenged the bank’s racially discriminatory employment polices with peaceful protests and sit-ins. At that time, bank officials only employed African Americans in menial positions, like janitors.
Jefferson Bank is a small, local bank that has been around for more than 100 years. The bank’s first location was at the northwest corner of Jefferson and Franklin (now known as Martin Luther King Drive). Activists targeted a bank that did business in the black community to call attention to widespread discrimination practiced by St. Louis businesses.
Roughly 30 demonstrators gathered outside the bank last Friday to re-enact the protests of yesteryear in remembrance of the occasion, as they have done for many years. According to Webb, Jefferson Bank personnel are no longer surprised to see hordes of people picketing the establishment.
“They have grown to expect us each year,” said Webb, a member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). “It’s become customary.”
Even in the late afternoon, temperatures peaked at about 100 degrees.
“Even though we were hot, we were enthusiastic to be out there,” said Melanie Green, of Chicago and who is related to both Seay and Webb.
The demonstrators, of varying ages and races, included a nun, union members, parents with children, and members of the Organization for Black Struggle, Webb said.
“It was nice to see that it was an event that was supported across cultures,” Green said.
It was Green’s first time participating in the demonstrations. She joined others as they chanted freedom songs like “We Shall Overcome” while they marched, bearing signs that read, “For decades the Jefferson Bank demonstration (1963) has been remembered!” Passers-by honked their car horns or yelled cheers of support.
Webb insists that those past protests are still relevant because very few know anything about the history of local struggles.
“These are persons who work in banks and are college graduates,” Webb said. “But, they have no idea about the problems.”
In the early 1960s, demonstrators in St. Louis protested under hostile conditions. When they refused to cease their demonstrations, seven prominent leaders in the African-American community, including Seay and Congressman Bill Clay, were arrested. Seay recalled being sentenced to 90 days in jail at the St. Louis Workhouse on Hall Street.
According to Webb, each weekend during the summer of 1963 demonstrators picketed a variety of businesses around the area. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks could not sit at the counter at White Castle nor seek employment there. He pointed out two White Castle locations along Kingshighway at Natural Bridge Road and Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.
“We picketed the WhiteCastles every Friday and Saturday,” Webb said. “Boy, those onions would begin smelling pretty good after a couple hours of picketing.”
Webb said that news coverage of the 1963 protests by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Globe Democrat “was at a minimum” and “derogatory.”
Employment is still the main civil rights issue 50 years later, according to Seay. He said there are still very few blacks in high-ranking business leadership positions in St. Louis. He still questions the number of blacks who have been employed and promoted at Jefferson Bank since 1963.
“Blacks have made some inroads,” Seay said, “but we haven’t made it sufficiently enough to move ahead. So we have to constantly fight.”
