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The community of African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri began with the arrival of both free and enslaved blacks during the colonial period of the history of St. Louis, Missouri. After the sale and transfer of the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, St. Louis was a hub for the slave trade, although many free blacks formed what one called a "colored aristocracy" before the American Civil War. After the war, the community experienced an increase in population with a concomitant increase in its economic and cultural significance. In addition, the community struggled against discriminatory practices, known as Jim Crow, that included housing, medical, and school segregation throughout the late 19th century and into the 20th century. During the 20th century, African Americans made progress in all three of these areas, although the residential community today remains largely although not entirely confined to the northern half of the city of St. Louis and the northern parts of St. Louis County.

History

Antebellum St. Louis: 1750–1861

Arrival and early land grants

The first recorded African American to live in the region was ... . In 1793, a land grand was given to a free black woman named Esther by Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau.

Abolitionism

William Wells Brown escaped from slavery in St. Louis and later became the first African-American novelist.

During the nascent abolitionist movement in the early 19th century, several voices argued against slavery in St. Louis, although they frequently were attacked by pro-slavery acolytes. In 1830, the newspaper editor (and later, abolitionist) Elijah Parish Lovejoy began publishing the St. Louis Times; among his press operators was William Wells Brown, an African-American slave who was hired out to Lovejoy. In 1834, Brown escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad and became the first African-American novelist. Brown's autobiography, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, was published in Boston in 1847.

In 1832, Lovejoy closed his press and began studies at the theological seminary of Princeton University; he returned to St. Louis in June 1833. Lovejoy, by then an ardent abolitionist, began editing the Presybterian-affiliated St. Louis Observer to encourage the movement in the region. His newspaper editorials provoked strong disapproval from the pro-slavery elements of the community.

Perhaps the most well-known lynching in the history of St. Louis was the burning of Francis McIntosh, which took place in April 1836. According to newspaper accounts, McIntosh was a free mulatto from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who worked on a steamboat on the levee. McIntosh interfered with the arrest of two other boatmen who had been fighting, and one of the arresting officers told McIntosh he would serve five years in prison for the incident; in response, McIntosh stabbed the two police officers, killing one of them. After a brief chase, McIntosh was arrested, but an angry mob broke into the jail and dragged McIntosh to the outskirts of town, where he was chained to a tree and burned to death. For years after the lynching, visitors to town (particularly from Pittsburgh) would go to the tree, cut pieces from it, and take them as memorials. While serving in the Illinois General Assembly in 1838, later-President Abraham Lincoln spoke on the incident in his address at the Lyceum, calling it "revolting to humanity," and that "[McIntosh's] story is very short, and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic, of anything of its length, that has ever been witnessed in real life."

After the lynching of Francis McIntosh in 1836, Elijah Lovejoy strongly denounced the event. However, the judge investigating the McIntosh case stated that Lovejoy's editorials were responsible for much of the tension in the area. In response, pro-slavery forces attacked the newspaper offices several times, and in July 1837, he moved to Alton, Illinois.

During the 1840s, groups of St. Louisans continued to push for abolitionism; in 1846, a group of free black men formed a secret society called the Knights of Liberty, whose original intent was to provoke an armed insurrection among slaves in the South. However, in July 1857, after years of planning, the group determined the best course of action was to wait for an outbreak of war, and in the meanwhile assist escaping slaves via the Underground Railroad. Moses Dickson, the group's leader, later became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Religious life

Early religious life of African Americans in St. Louis was centered on the Catholic Church, then located at the Old Cathedral, and the First African Baptist Church, located at Third and Market streets. According to a newspaper article from the 1870s, the last stone in the belfry of the Old Cathedral was placed by William Johnson, an African-American resident of Alton, Illinois. After climbing the tower and completing the dangerous job, Bishop Joseph Rosati gave Johnson a $5 gold coin.

First African opened due to the efforts of John Mason Peck and James E. Welch, Baptist missionaries who visited the region in 1818 and organized Sunday schools and religious services. John Berry Meachum, a former slave who had bought his freedom, assisted Peck in organization, and in 1822, African Americans formed a separate Protestant church. In 1827, the congregation built a brick church for services, and of its 220 members, 200 were enslaved African Americans. The church operated a clandestine school for blacks, while Meachum continued as a church leader and factory owner who employed enslaved African Americans and paid wages until they could buy their freedom. The church, which is the mother church for all black Baptist churches in the city, moved to Fourteenth and Clark streets in 1848, then to its present location on Bell Avenue in 1917.

Another early African American church was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was brought to the region by William Paul Quinn in 1840. Jordan Early, an early church leader, opened services in a log cabin on Main Street in 1841, followed by a move to Eleventh and Lucas streets during the 1850s. Like other black churches of the period, the church founded an illegal school teaching literacy skills. The church's pastor and schoolteacher, Hiram R. Revels, later became the first African American member of the United States Senate. In 1872, the church opened a new building, and it later moved to Mill Creek Valley, where it currently operates on Hamilton Avenue as the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Economic roles and slavery

Free African Americans also formed a part of the early economic community of Greater St. Louis. James Pierson Beckwourth, a mountain man, was the son of an enslaved black woman and a white veteran of the American War of Independence. After moving with his parents to St. Louis in 1806, he began work at blacksmith shops and trading posts, and eventually signed to work with William H. Ashley as part of Ashley's Hundred. During the 1850s, Beckwourth continued work as a scout and trader; he assisted the U.S. government in opening trails in Oregon, and he discovered a pass, now known as Beckwourth Pass, through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Another African American explorer and guide was Edward Rose, who traveled with Wilson Price Hunt and with Manuel Lisa on expeditions up the Missouri River and Yellowstone River.

One of the economic roles of St. Louis during the antebellum period was as a hub for the slave trade. Perhaps the most well-known location of slave sales was the Old Courthouse; on its steps slaves were sold as part of judicial auctions after owners died or fell into bankruptcy. The last slave auctions at the courthouse (and the last public slave auctions in the city) took place in 1861, when abolitionist protests disrupted and ended the proceedings. Other slave markets included that of Corbin Thompson, who operated at 3 South Sixth Street, and of Bernard M. Lynch, who operated a well-known market in the city. Lynch's slave market originally was located on Locust Street, midway between Fourth and Fifth streets; in 1859, his business outgrew the location and he moved to a site at the corner of Broadway and Clark streets. A minister from the second Baptist Church of St. Louis described Lynch's second slave pen on the eve of emancipation in 1866: "The room was in the shape of a parallelogram. It was plastered and had one small window high up near the ceiling. There was no floor but the bare earth. Three backless wooden benches stood next to the walls. There were seven slaves there, both men and women, herded together, without any arrangement for privacy." The slave pens eventually were demolished in 1963 as part of the construction of Busch Memorial Stadium.

Early black communities

Outside the original village of St. Louis, the first regional African American slaves lived on the farm of Louis Bompart in 1804, eight miles west of St. Louis along Manchester Road. Other slaveowners in that area included the Marshall and Berry families; combined with the Bomparts' slaves, these enslaved African Americans were the core of the antebellum black community in Rock Hill and Webster Groves. Slave quarters stood behind the Marshall House, near the intersection of Rock Hill and Manchester roads. In 1845, this early African American community built a stone church, known as the Rock Hill Presbyterian Church; the building was constructed by African Americans who were slaves of the Marshall family.

In nearby Kirkwood, Missouri, both free and enslaved African Americans lived in the village before the Civil War. Olive Chapel, an African Methodist Episocopal church, was built in 1853 at 330 West Washington in Kirkwood, although it was served by itinerant pastors for many years.

Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow: 1861–1945

Cultural life

Music, religion and sports formed pillars of African-American life in Greater St. Louis.

During the 1870s, black St. Louisans formed dozens of baseball teams, of which the St. Louis Blue Stockings were the most successful. Black teams leased at three professional fields or one of the city's playing fields in public parks. Later black teams such as the St. Louis Giants (which became the St. Louis Stars in 1922) were members of the National Negro League, and team owners constructed Stars Park as a purpose-built facility for the team.

Education

During the Civil War, the black population of St. Louis formed its own board of education, led by black community leaders. This board opened five primary schools, supported with money from the Western Sanitary Commission, which served more than 1,600 black students in the city. After the Civil War, with a new state constitution that required public support for black schools, the St. Louis Board of Education established a black school system that absorbed the students of the original five schools. The first public school opened by the board was Dumas School in 1866; originally known as Colored School No. 1 and located at 5th and Gratiot Streets in what is today the Downtown neighborhood, it had moved to Lucas and 14th Streets by 1880, and closed in the early 1970s.

The second public school for black students in St. Louis opened in 1867 in the North St. Louis neighborhood. Originally known as Colored School No. 2, it was renamed Dessalines School and served more than 300 students by 1871. The presence of Dessalines contributed to the growth of a small African American community in the North St. Louis neighborhood, although the community was destroyed when, in 1930, the city evicted its residents for construction of an interurban railroad line connecting the city to Illinois. The school operated until 1974 in the converted home, but was demolished shortly after its closure. By 1890, the board operated twelve black primary schools, although they frequently moved or closed depending on varying funding levels and building availability.

Central High School, the first high school for white St. Louisans, opened in 1853, but it was not until 1875 that the Board of Education opened Sumner High School, the first high school for black students west of the Mississippi River. Sumner opened largely at the behest of the growing black community, which sought redress from the Missouri legislature to force the opening in 1875. Although initially staffed by an all-white faculty, the black community successfully pushed for the school to be operated by black educators; by the early 1880s, this new faculty included John B. Vashon, who later was honored as the namesake of Vashon High School, the second high school for black students in St. Louis.

In St. Louis County, Kirkwood School District began providing services to black students as early as 1866; the first classes were held in rented buildings, and in 1869, students were moved to a dedicated facility near the intersection of Adams Avenue and Geyer Road called Booker T. Washington School. The school expanded to offer night classes in the 1870s, and in 1877 the first black teacher joined the faculty. After the growth of the Meacham Park neighborhood within the district boundaries, its residents petitioned for a new school closer to their community; in 1924, a four-room schoolhouse opened in Meacham Park as the James Milton Turner School. However, black students wishing to attend high school were enrolled at Sumner High School in St. Louis, or, after 1917, Douglass High School in Webster Groves.

The earliest black school in nearby Webster Groves, Missouri was privately operated from 1866 to 1868, when the newly formed Webster Groves School District added the school to its facilities. The building burned in 1890, and its replacement was built on Holland Avenue; in 1895, the school was named in honor of Frederick Douglass and operated as a primary school until 1917. In that year, Douglass High School opened in the building, and it served as the only accredited high school for blacks in St. Louis County.

In north St. Louis County, the town of Normandy was home to a one-room private schoolhouse known as the Vernon School, which offered classes to black residents of Normandy and, later, nearby Kinloch. The Vernon School was the only school open to Kinloch black residents until the creation of Kinloch School District in 1902;

Rise of the Ville and other black communities

In the mid-19th century, a neighborhood grew around the farm of Charles Elleards, becoming the village of Elleardsville. The village, which was annexed to St. Louis in 1876, became known as the Ville, and it became home to a small population of African Americans by the 1870s. In 1873, a school for African-American children opened in the neighborhood, and in 1885, the first African-American church opened.

In south St. Louis County, the early black community of Kirkwood was augmented by a neighborhood established in 1892 by Elzey Meacham, a white real estate speculator. Meacham Park, enclosed within Sappington Road, Interstate 44, Big Bend Boulevard, and Lindbergh Boulevard, encompassed 150 acres (0.61 km²) and became a segregated enclave for black residents. The community supported its own school, churches, police and fire service, and a local business sponsored a traveling semi-professional baseball team. Among the black entrepreneurs in Meacham Park was Bill Jones, who built the first black motel in the St. Louis area along U.S. Route 50 near Eureka, Missouri.

Another growing St. Louis black community during the late 19th century was Kinloch, which began as a real estate development with a small number of lots reserved for blacks. After a white landowner sold his parcel despite a restrictive covenant, other white landowners sold their lots to black residents; by the 1920s, a significant number of black residents had moved to Kinloch. These early residents formed churches and a school district, and in 1948, they incorporated Kinloch as the first all-black fourth-class city in Missouri.

Housing segregation

In 1913, a citizens' group of white St. Louisans began pushing for a municipal ordinance in the city of St. Louis to enforce residential segregation. The ordinance, which was opposed by a variety of civic groups, passed in a citywide referendum by a margin of 2 to 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=s4ETAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA299 In addition to the city ordinance, city property owners enacted 378 restrictive covenants, which prohibited sale or rent of property to African Americans. Despite the covenants and the city ordinance, African Americans sometimes bought property using straw parties or by passing as white in certain neighborhoods.

In 1939, the African-American Shelley family moved into a house at 4600 Labadie Avenue in St. Louis, despite a deed prohibition on transfers to African Americans. A local white family thus challenged the transfer. After nine years in the judicial system, the case was decided by the United States Supreme Court in favor of the Shelley family; the case, Shelley v. Kraemer, invalidated the use of racial restrictive covenants on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Civil Rights movement and desegregation: 1945–present

Desegregation of public places

During the late 1940s, the campaign for civil rights for African Americans focused on the desegregation of public swimming pools. Both St. Louis Commissioner of Parks Palmer B. Baumes and Director of Public Welfare John J. O'Toole agreed that integration of public pools was an appropriate step in early 1949, and one week prior to the opening of the pools, in June 1949, O'Toole issued an integration order. The decision was supported by St. Louis Mayor Joseph Darst. However, no significant preparations were made in advance of integration; the police and parks departments were not coordinated, although Mayor Darst unsuccessfully attempted to suppress newspaper coverage of integration to avoid last-minute violence at the parks.

On the first day of pool integration, June 21, 1949, most city pools were integrated without incident. One hundred African-American children visited Mullanphy Pool, while smaller numbers visited Marquette Pool and Soulard Playground pool. At Fairground Park pool, about thirty African-American boys and several hundred white boys arrived to swim; however, a group of at least one hundred white boys congregated outside the pool and threatened the African-American swimmers. The St. Louis Police Department was required to disperse the crowd and escort the African-American boys out of the park, and Mayor Darst rescinded the integration order for an evening swim session the same day. However, some African-American children were unaware of the rescinded order, and about thirty who arrived to swim were met by a mob of whites. According to reports, white adults in the crowd encouraged white boys to attack the African-American swimmers, and violence broke out throughout the park and neighborhood. Darst subsequently closed all public outdoor pools for the remainder of the swimming season.

In June 1950, outdoor pools were reopened for swimming, but the integration order remained rescinded. The St. Louis chapter of the NAACP and a group of religious leaders filed suit to force integration, and U.S. District Court Judge Ruby Hulen ruled on July 17, 1950 that the city enforce integration at the pools. Although the police protested that the ruling would lead to violence, the order went into effect on July 19, 1950; no violence occurred, although 175 police officers were assigned to patrol city pools, and parks officials reported a significant decrease in the number of whites using the facilities.

In 1961, CORE members organized a series of journeys by bus, known as the freedom rides, to test Supreme Court decisions overturning segregation in public accommodations and bus travel. In April 1961, prior to the national freedom rides into the southern states, the St. Louis CORE chapter planned and implemented its own freedom ride into southern Missouri. This ride ended with the arrest of fifteen members at a bus station restaurant in Sikeston, Missouri.

Perhaps the most well-known action by CORE was the Jefferson Bank protest, which took place in ... . After the successful action integrated the bank's employees, CORE's membership in St. Louis changed; it grew in size and concurrently became more youthful and more focused on the emerging Black Power movement. The newer members more often rejected interracial cooperation, and older members withdrew from the group. The new focus of the group during the 1960s became promoting job training and education for African Americans in the region; in 1968, the chapter created a program called Help Me to Help Myself to assist unskilled workers in finding jobs and improving their skills.

Desegregation in schools

In St. Louis County, Kirkwood School District closed Washington School in 1950 after expanding Turner School in Meacham Park; despite protests and a lawsuit that the remaining segregated Turner School was unequal to schools for whites, all black students attended Turner until the 1954 desegregation decision. After desegregation took effect in Kirkwood, schools remained de facto segregated until 1976, when Turner School was closed and its students were sent to other Kirkwood schools.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WWl0aWMSWSMC&pg=PA346 --- deseg in schools

http://books.google.com/books?id=WIJ4njjvRqEC&pg=PA61 -- radio

http://www.nlbpa.com/history.html -- baseball

Neighborhoods

The racial makeup of St. Louis in 2010. (Each dot represents 25 people - red dots are Whites, blue dots are Blacks, green is Asian, orange is Hispanic, gray is other).

St. Louis experienced three long-term periods of segregation between African-American and white neighborhoods: the first period, roughly defined between 1860 and 1930, saw a slow but steady increase in residential segregation in the region; the second, between 1930 and 1980, included a strong and high level segregation; and the third period, from 1980 to the present, includes a slow decline in residential segregation. The second phase of residential segregation notably lasted longer in St. Louis than in other parts of the United States; most American neighborhoods saw declines in segregation starting in the early 1970s, a decline that only began in the early 1980s in St. Louis. The long-term segregation of St. Louis was in large part due to the extensive use of restrictive covenants and rental ordinances; indeed, "virtually every imaginable technique, legal and illegal, was used to keep St. Louis segregated." Despite the declines in segregation, the St. Louis region remains deeply segregated when compared to other metropolitan statistical areas.

During the 1970s, much of the black population of the region began to move to suburban areas, and by the early 2000s, a significant majority lived outside the city of St. Louis. The main part of the African-American population of the region lives in north St. Louis County and in part of St. Clair County, Illinois, in areas contiguous to formerly segregated areas open to black residents (e.g. parts of north St. Louis city and East St. Louis).

• http://mappingdecline.lib.uiowa.edu/map/

Culture

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2011/07/city_of_haterz_horace_williams_low_blow_video_slave_mentality.php -- documentary film on culture

Institutions

St. Louis is home to Harris-Stowe State University, one of two historically black colleges in the state. In addition, the St. Louis Public Schools operates a magnet school focused on African culture and values, known as Pamoja Preparatory Academy at Cole School.

Radio and television

http://www.stlradio.com/articles-earlyblackvoices.htm

http://www.kwk106.com/history_kwk_soul.htm

http://www.radioblack.com/Missouri.html

Newspapers

The African-American community of St. Louis is served by three newspapers dedicated to the community: the St. Louis Argus, founded in 1912, the St. Louis American, founded in 1928, and the St. Louis Sentinel, founded in 1968.

References

http://books.google.com/books?id=u3hiBmjR98oC list of slaves in wills

• http://www.stlgs.org/index.php?option=com_stlgssearch&view=detail&doc=7&row=&before=999999&after=999999&id=157&Itemid=180&nosel=1
• http://books.google.com/books?id=GCwC9JMUh2EC
• Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita (2000). America's First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830–1915. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252025377.
• Christensen, Lawrence O. (1972). Black St. Louis: a Study in Race Relations, 1865–1916. St. Louis, Missouri: University of Missouri Press.
• Clamorgan, Cyprian (1999). Winch, Julie (ed.). The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826212368.
• Farley, John E. (1993). "Housing Segregation in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area, 1980-1990: Comparing Trends at the Block and Census Tract Level". Journal of Urban Affairs. 15 (6): 515–27.
• Early, Gerald, ed. (1998). Ain't But a Place: an Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis. St. Louis, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9781883982287. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Jack, Bryan M. (2007). Saint Louis African American and the Exodusters. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826217721.
• Jolly, Kenneth S. (2006). Black Liberation in the Midwest: the Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964–1970. New York, New York: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. ISBN 0415979692.
• Kimbrough, Mary (2000). Victory Without Violence: the First Ten Years of the St. Louis Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), 1947–1957. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826213037.
• Lumpkins, Charles L. (2008). American Pogrom: the East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821418024.
• Morris, Ann (1993). North Webster: a Photographic History of a Black Community. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253338956.
• Morris, Ann; Wesley, Doris, eds. (1999). Lift Every Voice and Sing: St. Louis African Americans in the Twentieth Century. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0826212530.
• Wright Sr., John A. (2004). African Americans in Downtown St. Louis. Black America. Chicago, Illinois: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0738531677.
• Wright Sr., John A. (2000). Kinloch: Missouri's First Black City. Black America. Chicago, Illinois: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0738507776.
• Wright, John A. (2002). Discovering African American St. Louis: a Guide to Historic Sites (2nd ed.). St. Louis, Missouri: Missouri Historical Society Press. ISBN 1883982456.

External links

• http://explorestlouis.com/visit-explore/discover/multicultural-heritage/african-american-history/
• http://www.stlamerican.com/
• http://theblackrep.org/theater/
• http://www.stl-aahgs.com/
• http://www.blackleadershiproundtable.org/
• http://previous.slpl.org/libsrc/blkbio.htm