St. Louis wrote the first segregation ordinance of the Twentieth Century and managed to retain defacto segregation to this day, despite the Fourteenth Amendment and two Supreme Court decisions. The city was divided into east of Grand and west of Grand. The west side was recognized in the law as retaining 75% occupancy by white owners or 100% ownership by white owners, with the east side maintaining the corresponding percentages of Blacks. No one of the opposite race could move into the respective neighborhoods. Despite the 1916 Supreme Court ruling of Buchanan vs. Warley, the use of neighborhood covenants continued to guarantee that the west was white and the east was black.

• February 29, 1916 – segregation ordinance by referendum
• 1917 – Marches against the selective service – Roger Baldwin and Emma Goldman
• November 1930 – League of Struggle for Negro Rights founded
• 1930’s – Dick Gregory’s Nigger, recounts life of poverty in the Ville neighborhood

The bisecting of neighborhoods created inordinate demand for living space on the east and caused prices for two-room apartments to soar.  During the Depression wages were so low for Black women that they staged protests at City Hall. Their most successful job  action was the Funsten Nutpickers in May 1933.  After five days they settled for double the pathetic piecework wages they had begun with. It was a victory for organized labor.

• July 8, 1932 – March on City Hall of 1,000 migrants, refugees from E. St. Louis, etc.
• July 11, 1932 – “July Riot” at City Hall – first of “hunger marches”
• May 13, 1933 – Funsten Nutpickers Strike (Black women) communist party vs. church tension
• 1937 – Colored Clerks Circle – Demonstrations and boycotts
• March 9, 1937 – Emerson Electric sitdown strike – 53 days
• November 1938 – Gaines vs Canada – Supreme Court rules: tuition to go out of state is not “separate but equal”

After the War, Black workers were laid off in huge numbers because of the last hired/ first fired policies across industries.  St. Louis gave in to Black pressure to create shared spaces in the parks and swimming pools, but the residents revolted at the policies. Neighborhood covenants continued to keep Black families out of white neighborhoods, even without legal sanction.

• 1946 – Ku Klux Klan burns a cross in Buder Playground, after Black children integrated
• 1948 – Shelly vs. Kramer – Supreme Court ruled against enforcement of racial covenants on Labadie
• June 21, 1949 integration of the Fairgrounds Park swimming pool, followed by riot
• 1951 – Pool re-opened and integrated
• 1956  – Pool closed and covered in concrete

The segregationist policies regarding real estate continue informally today, preventing integrated living spaces around the riverfront and west of Grand Avenue. The disparity in life expectancy, long-term health problems, and available healthy food plagues the east/ north side neighborhood to this day.