As Missouri’s first black congressman, William “Bill” Clay Sr., is no stranger to history.
As a charter member of the Congressional Black Caucus, he has made it.
As an alderman and activist who helped to execute the successful Jefferson Bank protests that spanned four years and introduced job equality to the region’s banking industry, he helped shape it.
And with a Post Office scheduled to take his name on Friday, he is now even more a part of it.
“It is a true honor,” Clay told the American on Monday of having the William “Bill” Clay Post Office Building dedication ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday at 11001 Dunklin Dr.
“Our Post Office is the best in the world, and so are its employees. I was proud to represent them and I’m quite proud to have the building take my name.”
In a sharply partisan Washington, D.C., Congressmen Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) and Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) co-sponsored the bill that made the honor possible and all nine members of Missouri’s national delegation supported the proposal.
That group, of course, included Clay’s son, U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, who will be among the speakers at Friday’s ceremony.
It will be a busy day for Clay, who will also take part in a public reading and booksigning for his newest book, The Jefferson Bank Confrontation: The Struggle for Civil Rights in St. Louis, at 7 p.m. Friday at Left Bank Books, 399 North Euclid.
Taking it to the bank
In 1963 while a city alderman, Clay, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), activists and common citizens banded together to take on Jefferson Bank.
After moving to a new facility downtown, the bank dismissed several black tellers and had no African-American employees.
Many whites joined in the struggle, which lasted almost four years. All involved faced death threats, police intimidation and jail. Clay and others also had to deal with black citizens and organizations calling them radicals and criticizing the protest effort.
Clay said the Jefferson Bank protest was vital to St. Louis “because it wasn’t just the banks” that were guilty of discrimination.
“You’d be shocked at the depth of unemployment for blacks in every industry in St. Louis,” he said.
Clay uses documents and published comments throughout the book, factually backing up his review of this important moment in St. Louis political and racial history.
He also shrewdly got factual numbers that documented several industries’ admitted lack of black employees when he requested the information on behalf of Mayor Raymond Tucker.
He released the report to the press and the entire world and entitled it “Anatomy of an Economic Murder.”
He noted that Peveley and other dairies had hundreds of jobs “and few black employees and none in white collar jobs.”
He said the breweries n including Anheuser-Busch n together had more than 7,000 jobs yet one black white-collar worker.
The Post-Dispatch and Globe Democrat had 2,200 jobs between them, yet the Post had just one black reporter and the Globe had zero. Of the 350 car sales employees in the area, there were no black salesmen and no black clerical workers.
“The information came from them, not from me,” Clay recalls.
“I was a member of the board of aldermen, and I requested the employment information by saying that Mayor Tucker wanted it to hopefully structure a piece of legislation to deal with (lack of diversity).
“So (the companies) sent me the true numbers n and then the newspapers really took out after me. They said how I got the numbers was unethical n and they didn’t pay attention to the lack of opportunity for blacks.”
But the city’s media n and the nation’s n were soon paying attention to the daily protests at Jefferson Bank.
More than 500 people would be arrested for trespassing and/or peace disturbance before the bank gave in and changed its hiring policies. That led to other industries doing the same.
Clay’s book pays homage to Norman Seay and many other “courageous individuals (who) never bowed to the dehumanizing conditions of discrimination or the pressures exerted by ‘The Establishment’ attempting to force their obedience to racist policies that denied African Americans equal opportunity in employment.”
“The book is dedicated to19 heroic civil rights fighters,” says Clay.
And, he writes, “the exposure and experience gained during the demonstrations developed qualities in young men and women that enabled them to later spearhead other community campaigns which transformed a once powerless people into a political force capable of working on its own behalf.”
All proceeds from Bill Clay Sr.’s “The Jefferson Bank Confrontation” go to the William Lacy Clay Scholarship and Research Foundation, a tax-exempt organization. All purchases are 100 percent tax deductible.
