Civil Rights in Post-War St. Louis

• 6 years of lunch counter sit-ins
• then theaters and hotels
• 1961 ordinance integrating public accommodations (but they already had been integrated)
• mid-fifties: Joint Opportunities Council – enforcing military non-discrimination policies
  • negotiated with grocery stores for Black employment
  • Famous-Barr Department store & Taystee Bread

CORE actions – Percy Green – the Jefferson Bank (large Black clientele, but no Black tellers)

• Protest August 30, 1963 – blocked entrances to bank, moved into lobby singing
• arrested Charles and Marian Oldham, William Clay
• protests continued, blocking traffic, one dollar bills, etc.
• 29 protestors imprisoned in Workhouse
• 86 supposed protesters arrested before event
• After seven months Jefferson Bank hired 5 Black tellers

1964 – CORE’s strong activists left them to found Action Council to Improve Opportunities for Negroes (ACTION)

July 14, 1964 – Percy Green and Richard Daly hung from the Arch to demand 10% of construction jobs go to Blacks.

• associated with Black power, but really advocated for “More and better jobs for Black men.”
• occupied and blocked various industries for lack of 10% Black employment
• to neutralize the adversary with a certain amount of humor”
• chained themselves to the float of “the Veiled Prophet” during annual parade

Jeff-Vander -Lou, Inc.

• rehabilitated 600 homes
• sold to Black  dispossessed people at a favorable price
• Black Mennonite members bought many of the homes.

Ivory Perry

• caused traffic jams lying in the road,  inspired by the displacement of Blacks by urban renewal and highway construction
  • “Negro removal by white approval”

Pruitt-Igoe: 33 – 11-story buildings on the northside – completed 1954

• Architect – Minoru Yamasaki
• supposed to be residence for those in Mill Creek Valley displaced by highway construction
• filled to  91 % capacity in 1957
• lacked air conditioning; elevators stopped at every other floor.
• outlawed husbands or men living with unwed mothers who could supplement their income
• considered telephones and television as evidence of financial means
• lacked maintenance support or watchmen
• drug trafficking
• people moving out: vacancy rate 25% in 1965, 43% in 1969
• Behind Ghetto Walls – sociological study that explored social criticism
  • extreme conditions in P-I produced extreme personality-types
  • overzealous Christianity, anti-white politics, oversexualized, etc.
• Tomorrow’s Tomorrow – Joyce Ladner, found the resilience in young Black women instead of degeneracy
  • “decolonized” social scientific methodology
  • emotional precocity, realism, resourcefulness in the women she studied
• Canine officer Paul McCulloch shot in 1964 in pursuit of a robbery suspect – symbol of police-IG project strife
• ACTION “blue paper” reported that police killed 35 suspects; shot 23 others; beat  52 others
• Joint march of white and black protesters against the shooting of Timothy Walsh, a white teenager, October, 1966
• March 16, 1972 – first implosion of the P-I, completed in 1975.

July 1953- 1954 – Testing of Aerosolized radiological weapons in north St, Louis -zinc cadmium sulfide

• 163 chemical releases in “densely populated slum districts”; same areas that Harland Bartholomew targeted.

May 1963 – 1965 – chemical releases from Pruit-Igoe of classified gases

1967 – Occupation of the Human Development Corporation – led by Ora Lee Malone – demanding jobs for women.

1969 – First rent strikes in modern history: demand that their rent be calculated on their ability to pay, due process on the assessment of charges for property damages, credit for partial payment of rent, etc.  1000 tenants participated. Housing Authority gave in to the demands on October 19, 1969.

Oscar Newman – “defensible space” city planning with gates and bollards ( huge concrete pots in the road-(” Schoemehl Pots”) – a model replicated nationally

“Team 4” suggested removing residents of the ghetto and planting them in zones around the thriving neighbors, where tax incentives would encourage building quality residences. The removal plan was roundly opposed and sunk.

January, 1979- Announced closing of Homer G. Philips Hospital announced. Transferred operations to City Hospital on the Southside. Rationalizations neglected the care of residents on the northside.

• protests began immediately
• Howard Venable, Dick Gregory
• attacked St. Louis University for pushing the plan

August 16, 1979 – Closing with 150 police in riot gear

1977- Federal Homesteading Act – offering property in the North end for purchase. Suggested minimum income, college degree, etc.

“rendered the working class Black population of St. Louis surplus.” (385)