“In St. Louis the history of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare upon the living.” (436)

Perhaps this is Walter Johnson’s conclusion from his two hundred-year survey of racial history of St. Louis: The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States.

He says in the first chapter it is a history of “extraction and eviction,” and he draws parallels to the methods applied to Native peoples and Black peoples.  Wherever the peoples resided, if they stood in the way of imperial development, they were removed.  Whatever the peoples had to offer, from beaver trading to land ripe for development, it was seized as a matter of privilege.  The assault of Black homes in East St. Louis in 1917 was comparable to the assault of Native peoples prior to the Civil War:

Consciously or not, the murderous white men of East St. Louis employed the tactics of their military forebears in the West– of Nathaniel Lyon on Bloody Island and, even more pointedly, William Harney at Ash Hollow in the Nebraska Territory. They burned their victims out and shot them as they ran. They drove them out of their houses and off their land (241).

What was accepted by powerful white people in the nineteenth century about Native peoples, was practiced with impunity with Black people in the twentieth century: “extraction and eviction.”

The question implicit in the entire history recounted by Johnson is “How are the White elite of today scripted by the actions of their forebears?” What suppositions and impulses are guided by the imperial assumptions of the past? How do the citizens of St. Louis break the pattern of exploitation and turn to regeneration of the neighborhoods and the victimized residents who live in them?

As the title suggests, the patterns of violence in this one city were duplicated in cities across the country.  St. Louis might have initiated the patterns of dispossession of the nonwhite races, but they were replicated in Chicago, in Atlanta, in New Orleans, and across the land.

The latter chapters of Broken Heart reveal the failure of federal programs of redevelopment, of block grants,  of fair housing, of low-income housing, all targeting disadvantaged people, but benefiting only the advantaged wealthy.  The efforts of the Great Society and Nixon’s “Black Capitalism” were for naught.  The nightmare of the past seems to preside over the failure of reform.

In his Epilogue Johnson turns to the Black-initiated projects of rehabilitation of housing, of art and culture, and occupational education.  He lists dozens of small projects with promise and possibility, such as:

• Art House Collective – North St. Louis (mental health support and meals for residents)
• Perennial – repurposing discarded objects and community education
• Solidarity Economy St. Louis and Citizen Carpentry – networks of cooperation and mutual support- used bricks for a spiral pathway on “Tillie’s Corner,” site of a beloved neighborhood grocery
• Granite City Arts and Design Collective  – east of the river – urban gardening and sustainable agriculture

Whether symbolic or substantial, Johnson applauds the spirit of hope and wisdom to find the real needs of people.  Many of these visionaries have become close friends of the author, because he spent time in the neighborhoods he wrote about and brought his students to contribute to their rehabilitation.

Recently Johnson was interviewed by Tef Poe about his book on Facebook. Poe is the creator of Hands-Up United, a “books and breakfast” program which meets biweekly around the city, bringing together kids and adults for food, fellowship and free books.”  He also sponsors an annual art show for local artists.

They bantered like old friends, occasionally forgetting their audience, but displaying hope for North St. Louis, often absent in Johnson’s history. He revealed that his aspiration for this neighborhood was an arts and culture center that would attract local talent along with an appreciative following.

The Epilogue includes the failure of St. Louis to break the pattern of police brutality, but it ends with a survey of local restoration, of small, dedicated efforts to change history in North St. Louis.  We get the feeling that we are not imprisoned by history as long as there are sensitive reformers to write a counter-narrative. It is an astonishing conclusion after a review of centuries of extraction and eviction.  We discover that Walter Johnson uncovered the dregs of racial capitalism to recover the spirit of some who are rewriting it.   There is hope in self-regeneration.

Whether the white power structure can be re-invented to reverse years of white supremacy remains in question. The disturbing  echo of the Walter Brown saga, the exoneration of officer Jason Stockley accused of murdering Anthony Lamarr Smith (2011), suggests that the momentum of history is inescapable. Johnson chooses to chronicle this event at the beginning of the Epilogue, preventing our leap into optimism.

Since the writing of The Broken Heart we have the story of George Floyd to add to the narrative of Blue on Black.  Diverse protesting groups are seizing the moment to strive for change, but there is yet the “law and order” theme of the Presidential campaign to serve as a counter-point.  We are still writing the Epilogue of The Broken Heart of America in our narrative of the Fall, 2020.