Since the founding of St. Louis in 1764, Downtown St. Louis has been a center of black cultural, economic, political, and legal achievements that have shaped not only the city of St. Louis, but the nation as well. From James Beckworth, one of the founders of Denver, Colorado, to Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress and author of the only behind-the-scenes account of Lincoln's White House years, black residents of Downtown St. Louis have made an indelible mark in American history. From the monumental Dred Scott case to entertainers such as Josephine Baker, Downtown St. Louis has been home to many unforgettable faces, places, and events that have shaped and strengthened the American experience for all.
Since the founding of St. Louis, African Americans have lived in communities throughout the area. Although St. Louis' 1916 "Segregation of the Negro Ordinance" was ruled unconstitutional, African Americans were restricted to certain areas through real estate practices such as steering and red lining. Through legal efforts in the court cases of Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, Jones v. Mayer in 1978, and others, more housing options became available and the population dispersed. Many of the communities began to decline, disappear, or experience urban renewal.
Since the founding of St. Louis in 1764, Downtown St. Louis has been a center of black cultural, economic, political, and legal achievements that have shaped not only the city of St. Louis, but the nation as well. From James Beckworth, one of the founders of Denver, Colorado, to Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress and author of the only behind-the-scenes account of Lincoln's White House years, black residents of Downtown St. Louis have made an indelible mark in American history. From the monumental Dred Scott case to entertainers such as Josephine Baker, Downtown St. Louis has been home to many unforgettable faces, places, and events that have shaped and strengthened the American experience for all.
The city of St. Louis is known for its African American citizens and their many contributions to the culture within its borders, the country, and the world. Images of Modern America: African American St. Louis profiles some of the events that helped shape St. Louis from the 1960s to the present. Tracing key milestones in the city's history, this book attempts to pay homage to those African Americans who sacrificed to advance fair socioeconomic conditions for all. In the closing decades of the Great Migration north, the civil rights movement was taking place nationally; simultaneously, St. Louis's African Americans were organizing to exert political power for greater control over their destiny. Protests, voter registration, and elections to public office opened new doors to the city's African Americans. It resulted in the movement for fairness in hiring practices and the expansion of the African American presence in sports, education, and entertainment.
"This is a theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly documented historical case study of the movements for African American liberation in St. Louis. Through detailed analysis of black working class mobilization from the depression years to the advent of Black Power, award-winning historian Clarence Lang describes how the advances made in earlier decades were undermined by a black middle class agenda that focused on the narrow aims of black capitalists and politicians. The book is a major contribution to our understanding of the black working class insurgency that underpinned the civil rights and Black Power campaigns of the twentieth century." ---V. P. Franklin, University of California, Riverside "A major work of scholarship that will transform historical understanding of the pivotal role that class politics played in both civil rights and Black Power activism in the United States. Clarence Lang's insightful, engagingly written, and well-researched study will prove indispensable to scholars and students of postwar American history." ---Peniel Joseph, Brandeis University Breaking new ground in the field of Black Freedom Studies, Grassroots at the Gateway reveals how urban black working-class communities, cultures, and institutions propelled the major African American social movements in the period between the Great Depression and the end of the Great Society. Using the city of St. Louis in the border state of Missouri as a case study, author Clarence Lang undermines the notion that a unified "black community" engaged in the push for equality, justice, and respect. Instead, black social movements of the working class were distinct from---and at times in conflict with---those of the middle class. This richly researched book delves into African American oral histories, records of activist individuals and organizations, archives of the black advocacy press, and even the records of the St. Louis' economic power brokers whom local black freedom fighters challenged. Grassroots at the Gateway charts the development of this race-class divide, offering an uncommon reading of not only the civil rights movement but also the emergence and consolidation of a black working class. Clarence Lang is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Photo courtesy Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, St. Louis
A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.
Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a salve and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. Through the eyes of this black woman, we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.
A reputation as the town of shoes, booze and blues persists in St. Louis. But a fascinating history waits just beneath the surface in the heart of the city, like the labyrinth of natural limestone caves where Anheuser-Busch got its start. One of the city's Garment District shoe factories was the workplace of a young Tennessee Williams, referenced in his first Broadway play, The Glass Menagerie. Downtown's vibrant African American community was the source and subject of such folk-blues classics as "Frankie and Johnny" and "Stagger Lee," not to mention W.C. Handy's classic "St. Louis Blues." Navigate this hidden heritage of downtown St. Louis with author Maureen Kavanaugh.
Decades before the 1960s, social reformers began planting the seeds for the Modern Civil Rights era. During the period spanning World Wars I and II, St. Louis, Missouri, was home to a dynamic group of African American social welfare reformers. The city’s history and culture were shaped both by those who would construct it as a southern city and by the heirs of New England abolitionism. Allying with white liberals to promote the era’s new emphasis on “the common good,” black reformers confronted racial segregation and its consequences of inequality and, in doing so, helped to determine the gradual change in public policy that led to a more inclusive social order. In Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949, historian Priscilla A. Dowden-White presents an on-the-ground view of local institution building and community organizing campaigns initiated by African American social welfare reformers. Through extensive research, the author places African American social welfare reform efforts within the vanguard of interwar community and neighborhood organization, reaching beyond the “racial uplift” and “behavior” models of the studies preceding hers. She explores one of the era’s chief organizing principles, the “community as a whole” idea, and deliberates on its relationship to segregation and the St. Louis black community’s methods of reform. Groping toward Democracy depicts the dilemmas organizers faced in this segregated time, explaining how they pursued the goal of full, uncontested black citizenship while still seeking to maximize the benefits available to African Americans in segregated institutions. The book’s nuanced mapping of the terrain of social welfare offers an unparalleled view of the progress brought forth by the early-twentieth-century crusade for democracy and equality. By delving into interrelated developments in health care, education, labor, and city planning, Dowden-White deftly examines St. Louis’s African American interwar history. Her in-depth archival research fills a void in the scholarship of St. Louis’s social development, and her compelling arguments will be of great interest to scholars and teachers of American urban studies and social welfare history.
The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. “That's just how they are” or “there's really no excuse”: we've all heard those not so subtle digs. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. We haven't known how much the country will gain by properly valuing homes and businesses, family structures, voters, and school districts in Black neighborhoods. And we need to know. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes readers on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued. Perry begins in his hometown of Wilkinsburg, a small city east of Pittsburgh that, unlike its much larger neighbor, is struggling and failing to attract new jobs and industry. Bringing his own personal story of growing up in Black-majority Wilkinsburg, Perry also spotlights five others where he has deep connections: Detroit, Birmingham, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. He provides an intimate look at the assets that should be of greater value to residents—and that can be if they demand it. Perry provides a new means of determining the value of Black communities. Rejecting policies shaped by flawed perspectives of the past and present, it gives fresh insights on the historical effects of racism and provides a new value paradigm to limit them in the future. Know Your Price demonstrates the worth of Black people's intrinsic personal strengths, real property, and traditional institutions. These assets are a means of empowerment and, as Perry argues in this provocative and very personal book, are what we need to know and understand to build Black prosperity.
