The packed auditorium of Jesuit Hall on August 28 was an encouraging sign. The event, “Breaking the Bubble: Striving for Peace and Justice in St. Louis,” was hosted by Norm White, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Saint Louis University. The goal, White said, was to help the university’s students make connections off campus and gain awareness of the social justice issues impacting North St. Louis.
“Our students are leaders of tomorrow,” White said. “We hope to promote the idea that North St. Louis is part of the St. Louis community and that the St. Louis community is the community of Saint Louis University.”
The Rev. Clyde Crumpton of Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church and I were invited to explain the history of North St. Louis and the invisible, but real, racial boundaries in our famously polarized region.
For me, the evening’s topic was apropos. We have lived in a racially restricted bubble for far too long, and unless we find bold and inclusive ways to break through St. Louis will never live up to its potential.
According to the 1850 Census, a few more than 3,000 free blacks and slaves lived in St. Louis at the time. Some held jobs as riverboat workers, servants, artisans and dockworkers. There were a few wealthy black landowners with property along the Mississippi Riverfront’s entertainment district.
However, by the turn of the century, when hundreds of thousands of blacks migrated north to escape the blatant racial cruelty of the South, most blacks were restricted to impoverished areas of the city. Mill Creek Valley – bounded by 20th Street, Grand Avenue, Olive Street and Scott Avenue – was such a place. At its peak, 20,000 blacks, including famous artists such as Scott Joplin and Josephine Baker, called Mill Creek home. There were more than 800 businesses with black doctors, lawyers, photographers, musicians, restaurant owners, and civil rights and labor activists conducting business there.
During the time of restrictive, segregated housing laws in the early-to-mid-1900s, blacks were also steered to the Greater Ville area. Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the city’s only facility for black patients and the training of doctors, fortified the area until it was shuttered in the late 1970s. The Greater Ville was a solid middle-class neighborhood with thriving institutions such as Antioch Baptist Church, Annie Malone Children’s Home and Sumner High School.
As heavily-populated as Mill Creek was, it was also marked by poverty and slum properties. Federal money from the Housing Act of 1949 led city authorities to adopt a redevelopment plan that would rid the city of concentrated poverty in the downtown business district.
City planners came up with a wild idea to build 33 11-story buildings on one 37-acre tract of land to house the poor and working class. The development, Pruitt-Igoe, was an immediate failure. The same federal money used to build the complex opened the door to housing developments in the suburbs that lured thousands of residents, mostly white, out of the city.
With the opening of Pruitt-Igoe in 1952, Mill Creek and other poor surrounding enclaves were razed. New residential, commercial and industrial zones were enacted in the area. Ironically, certain industries in the area, mostly white, met the new zoning requirements and were allowed to stay, while most of the black businesses became non-existent. We can only imagine how strong the area could have been or how many generations of jobs could have been created if federal funds had been invested in homes and businesses in Mill Creek.
Pruitt-Igoe, with its peak residency of 12,000 impoverished residents, only lasted about 20 years before demolition began in 1972. The area has remained vacant for more than three decades.
As Pruitt-Igoe was raised, city leaders hired a company by the name of Team Four, Inc. to prepare a city-wide comprehensive planning study. The study was immediately criticized for what many black leaders saw as a purposeful attempt to withhold services and public investments from North St. Louis. Although the architects of the plan adamantly denied charges of advocating “benign neglect” in North St. Louis, it could be argued that a de facto strategy of disinvestment has been operative for the past three decades. While majority-white areas such as the Central West End and Lafayette Square were redeveloped, areas occupied primarily by African Americans deteriorated.
For more than 60 years, civic and political leaders have been trapped in the bubble of segregated development. In a city with a plurality-black and increasingly diverse population it’s a disturbing commentary that private, federal, state and city resources are still directed primarily toward downtown development.
The auditorium filled with Professor White’s young “leaders of tomorrow” was indeed encouraging. New leadership is desperately needed in St. Louis. A generation of bold, innovative and inclusive thinkers is what’s needed to finally turn long-neglected, crime- and poverty-filled areas of North St. Louis into economically viable, stable and safe neighborhoods.
This is the first of a four-part series that will explore the possibilities of economic turn-around in long-neglected segments of St. Louis.
Sylvester Brown, Jr. is a St. Louis-based writer and founder and director of the Sweet Potato Project, a nonprofit program in St. Louis that teaches at-risk youth “do-for-self” entrepreneurial skills. For more information, visit sweetpotatoprojectstl.org.
