Segregation died hard in St. Louis. While the Supreme Court sent a consistent message of non-discriminatory housing, the white population of the city and the county revised its approach decade by decade, and the real estate brokers learned how to preserve white neighborhoods without local Constitutionally-suspect covenants or policies.  This chapter tells the story of how segregation in St. Louis is viable to this day.

1916 – Buchanan vs. Warley – Court unanimously invalidated a Louisville residential segregation law as a deprivation of liberty and property without due process of law.

City planner- Harold Bartholomew – Zoning was segregation by other means: “before decay sets in it seems absolutely necessary, logical and reasonable to establish permanent restrictions which will continue to preserve those districts in their present condition.”(Bartholomew, “The Zone Plan, 30.)  Johnson calls him the “segregation and suburbanization czar of the United States, using St. Louis, by every account, as his laboratory.” (Riediger and Esch, The Production of Difference,  115-120; Rothstein, The Color of Law, 60-62, 82-88; Batholomew, “The Zone Plan,” 30)

1935 – Bond issue for clearing the waterfront: the mayor, Bernard Dickmann, made profit on selling waterfront property to the city and turning it into a “monument.” Dickmann employed city employees to go door-to-door promoting the bond issue and passed it by 3 to  1 margin. He also convinced the National Park Service they had agreed to matching funds for the project. Clearing of 400 apartment buildings and small restaurant/ entertainment businesses, without any real plan for development.

1947 – Nothing was done with the cleared space until the Comprehensive City Plan of 1947. Bartholomew proposed a network of expressways (the only place in the US where four interstate highways converge), single family houses, airports and low density neighborhoods. The highways eliminated Black neighborhoods and a cemetery. The neighborhoods were declared “obsolete” or “blighted, ” altogether twenty square miles of land largely inhabited by poor Black residents.

Bartholomew employed people to count the number of outdoor toilets in the area and used the data to warn that “This cancerous growth may engulf the entire city if  steps are not taken to prevent it.” The theme was taken up in the February, 1948 Post-Dispatch, with contrasting photos of the east and west side of Grand. A map of Mill Creek Valley was printed under the heading: “Cancerous Slum District Eating Away at the Heart of the City.”  Pictures of three African American children playing in front of rowhouses: “Marching Blight.”

1949 – Shelley vs. Kramer – outlawed racial covenants to exclude people from buying.

“Black removal by white approval”( Ivory Perry). The strategy of clearing out poor, Black families to replace them with prosperous White families was captured in the plan:

The enactment of the much delayed revised zoning ordinance will be extremely beneficial to these areas. Supplementing the zoning, however, there should be encouragement for the formation of strong neighborhood associations interested in protecting their character and environment.

In other words “racial covenants.” The Race Relations Commission called attention to the displacement and noted that other cities, like Chicago had included relocation funds for residents in their budgets. The Progressive Party requested the help of the League of Women Voters to organize a conference to call attention to this housing need, but the the League pocket-vetoed it.

February 1959 – Mill Creek Valley demolished; historical buildings along with residences of 20,000 people. Other neighborhoods demolished: Cochran Gardens; Darst-Webbe; Kosciusko; DeSoto-Carr (1950’s and 1960’s). 20% of Mill Creek Valley residents moved to the new Pruitt-Igoe. No record of where the remaining 80% found housing.

1950-60’s – decline of the city, growth of the county. McDonnell Aircraft; Monsanto; Ralston-Purina; Mallinckrodt

1953 – Supreme Court outlawed civil suits against home-owners who sold to Blacks or immigrants.

1965 – “Sixteen in Webster Groves” CBS’s Charles Kuralt’s case study of high school students and their ambitions; highly insular and reproductive of the lives they already lived.

Jules Henry, Culture Against Man: “pecuniary  philosophy, pecuniary history, pecuniary psychology, and pecuniary truth.” in Webster Groves.

1935 – FHA appraisers manual advised that “If a neighborhood is to retain its stability it is necessary that the properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” Used color-coded maps to show “hazardous” to “best” neighborhoods.

Post-war- Veterans’ Administration maintained the same standard for loans.

1965 – Black family moved into Walnut Park and had a concrete block hurled through their front window

1956 – Venable purchase of house in Creve Coeur. Citizens organize to build a park on his property, taking it by eminent domain. December, 1959 ruling against Venable to allow the seizure of his house. It became John T. Beirne Park.

1961 – Fair housing ordinance in city of St. Louis

1963 – Fair housing in St. Louis County

1972 – Supreme Court rules against the recording of deeds that include racial covenants.

Racial discrimination remains enforced by the zoning for one-family homes, inordinate plot sizes, lack of mass transportation.

Right wing voices in St. Louis – Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schafly ( A Choice, Not an Echo), Nazi Party, Gerald L.K. Smith (The Cross and the Flag) John A. Stormer (None Dare Call it Treason)