The Ville, St. Louis

The Ville, St. Louis PDF Author: John Aaron Wright
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738508153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
A few miles from downtown St. Louis, The Ville was once locked off from much of the area. In spite of racial obstacles, this small community became nationally known as the cradle of black culture and intellect in St. Louis. Current and former residents will recognize photographs of Sumner High School and Homer G. Phillips Hospital, as well as many famous former residents. Over the years this once thriving community fell into decline, and is now struggling to recapture some of its former glory.

The Ville, St. Louis

The Ville, St. Louis PDF Author: John Aaron Wright
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738508153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
A few miles from downtown St. Louis, The Ville was once locked off from much of the area. In spite of racial obstacles, this small community became nationally known as the cradle of black culture and intellect in St. Louis. Current and former residents will recognize photographs of Sumner High School and Homer G. Phillips Hospital, as well as many famous former residents. Over the years this once thriving community fell into decline, and is now struggling to recapture some of its former glory.

St. Louis

St. Louis PDF Author: John Aaron Wright
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738533629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Since the founding of St. Louis, African Americans have lived in communities throughout the area. Although St. Louis' 1916 "Segregation of the Negro Ordinance" was ruled unconstitutional, African Americans were restricted to certain areas through real estate practices such as steering and red lining. Through legal efforts in the court cases of Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, Jones v. Mayer in 1978, and others, more housing options became available and the population dispersed. Many of the communities began to decline, disappear, or experience urban renewal.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift Every Voice and Sing PDF Author: Ann Morris
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826212530
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Profiles of 100 prominent African Americans of St. Louis reveal challenges faced by Blacks throughout the 20th century. Men and women from fields including medicine, education, music, journalism, and business relate their experiences of racism, obstacles they overcame in their professions, and lessons that life has taught them. An introduction paints a picture of 100 years of the city's history. The book includes portraits of each person profiled by Wiley Price, a prizewinning photojournalist for the St. Louis American. Wesley and Morris are affiliated with the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

African Americans in Downtown St. Louis

African Americans in Downtown St. Louis PDF Author: John A. Wright Sr.
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439614652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Since the founding of St. Louis in 1764, Downtown St. Louis has been a center of black cultural, economic, political, and legal achievements that have shaped not only the city of St. Louis, but the nation as well. From James Beckworth, one of the founders of Denver, Colorado, to Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress and author of the only behind-the-scenes account of Lincoln's White House years, black residents of Downtown St. Louis have made an indelible mark in American history. From the monumental Dred Scott case to entertainers such as Josephine Baker, Downtown St. Louis has been home to many unforgettable faces, places, and events that have shaped and strengthened the American experience for all.

African American St. Louis

African American St. Louis PDF Author: John A. Wright, Sr., John A. Wright, Jr. and Curtis A. Wright, Sr.
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467115096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
The city of St. Louis is known for its African American citizens and their many contributions to the culture within its borders, the country, and the world. Images of Modern America: African American St. Louis profiles some of the events that helped shape St. Louis from the 1960s to the present. Tracing key milestones in the city's history, this book attempts to pay homage to those African Americans who sacrificed to advance fair socioeconomic conditions for all. In the closing decades of the Great Migration north, the civil rights movement was taking place nationally; simultaneously, St. Louis's African Americans were organizing to exert political power for greater control over their destiny. Protests, voter registration, and elections to public office opened new doors to the city's African Americans. It resulted in the movement for fairness in hiring practices and the expansion of the African American presence in sports, education, and entertainment.

Mapping Decline

Mapping Decline PDF Author: Colin Gordon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form." Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history. Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.

St. Louis Noir

St. Louis Noir PDF Author: Scott Phillips
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617754617
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
“St. Louis gets a turn to show its dark side . . . [A] spirited, black-hearted collection” including a story from New York Times–bestselling author John Lutz (Kirkus Reviews). A vibrant Midwest metropolis, St. Louis has a rich, multicultural history of art and literature—both high and low. That duality is embraced here in an anthology that spans the reaches of noir, from violent criminality to bad luck and bad attitudes. St. Louis Noir includes stories by bestselling authors John Lutz and Scott Phillips, a poetic interlude featuring Poet Laureate Michael Castro, and more tales from Calvin Wilson, LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, Paul D. Marks, Colleen J. McElroy, Jason Makansi, S.L. Coney, Laura Benedict, Jedidiah Ayres, Umar Lee, Chris Barsanti, and L.J. Smith. “The stories here are uniformly strong. Regular readers of the Noir series know what to expect: tightly written, tightly plotted, mostly character-driven stories of murder and mayhem, death and despair, shadow and shock.” —Booklist “Thirteen tales of grim homicidal happenings (plus one poetic interlude) set in the streets of the St. Louis area.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Stalking Horse

Stalking Horse PDF Author: Virvus Jones
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781985855595
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Things were changing rapidly in the world around us - and we were absorbing much of it. I want to tell you a story about a group of young, gifted, black boys growing up in the slums of a major industrial city in the U.S. Notwithstanding their social status in neo-slavery America, they had dreams. One of them (in particular) had the wildest dream of all. He believed he could become the mayor of their hometown. It was the summer of 1954 amidst Brown vs. Board of Education in the segregated, southern town of Petersville. Billy Strayhorn, the new kid on the block, had just graduated grammar school and the events of the night would forever change his life. Follow the lives of Teddy "T.C." Chambers, Ronald Jackson, Wiley Fentress, Leonard Marcus, George "Snake" Martin, Demitrius "Meat" Walker and Billy Strayhorn as their world evolves out of the conditions they are facing. Freedom rides, sit-ins, arrests, deployment to Vietnam and law school are just a few of the events that unfold, forever impacting their lives. Power, deception and crime threaten to destroy the influence of each man as this political tale uncovers the realities that contributed to modern Black politics in the United States.

Climbing the Ladder, Chasing the Dream

Climbing the Ladder, Chasing the Dream PDF Author: Candace O’Connor
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 082627465X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Nothing about Homer G. Phillips Hospital came easily. Built to serve St. Louis’s rapidly expanding African-American population, the grand new hospital opened its doors in 1937, toward the end of the Great Depression. “Homer G.,” as many called it, joined a burgeoning group of black hospitals amid a national period of institutional segregation and strong racial prejudice nationwide. When the beautiful, up-to-date hospital opened, it attracted more black residents than any other such program in the United States. Patients also flocked to the hospital, as did nursing students who found there excellent training, ready employment, and a boost into the middle class. For decades, the hospital thrived; by the 1950s, three-quarters of African-American babies in St. Louis were born at Homer G. But the 1960s and 1970s brought less need for all-black hospitals, as faculty, residents, and patients were increasingly welcome in the many newly integrated institutions. Ever-tightening city budgets meant less money for the hospital, and in 1979, despite protests from the African-American community, HGPH closed. Years later, the venerated, long-vacant building came to life again as the Homer G. Phillips Senior Living Community. Candace O’Connor draws upon contemporary newspaper articles, institutional records, and dozens of interviews with former staff members to create the first, full history of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital. She also brings new facts and insights into the life and mysterious murder (still an unsolved case) of the hospital’s namesake, a pioneering Black attorney and civil rights activist who led the effort to build the sorely needed medical facility in the Ville neighborhood.

Damn Near White

Damn Near White PDF Author: Carolyn Marie Wilkins
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826272401
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Carolyn Wilkins grew up defending her racial identity. Because of her light complexion and wavy hair, she spent years struggling to convince others that she was black. Her family’s prominence set Carolyn’s experiences even further apart from those of the average African American. Her father and uncle were well-known lawyers who had graduated from Harvard Law School. Another uncle had been a child prodigy and protégé of Albert Einstein. And her grandfather had been America's first black assistant secretary of labor. Carolyn's parents insisted she follow the color-conscious rituals of Chicago's elite black bourgeoisie—experiences Carolyn recalls as some of the most miserable of her entire life. Only in the company of her mischievous Aunt Marjory, a woman who refused to let the conventions of “proper” black society limit her, does Carolyn feel a true connection to her family's African American heritage. When Aunt Marjory passes away, Carolyn inherits ten bulging scrapbooks filled with family history and memories. What she finds in these photo albums inspires her to discover the truth about her ancestors—a quest that will eventually involve years of research, thousands of miles of travel, and much soul-searching. Carolyn learns that her great-grandfather John Bird Wilkins was born into slavery and went on to become a teacher, inventor, newspaperman, renegade Baptist minister, and a bigamist who abandoned five children. And when she discovers that her grandfather J. Ernest Wilkins may have been forced to resign from his labor department post by members of the Eisenhower administration, Carolyn must confront the bittersweet fruits of her family's generations-long quest for status and approval. Damn Near White is an insider’s portrait of an unusual American family. Readers will be drawn into Carolyn’s journey as she struggles to redefine herself in light of the long-buried secrets she uncovers. Tackling issues of class, color, and caste, Wilkins reflects on the changes of African American life in U.S. history through her dedicated search to discover her family’s powerful story.