Instead, there was what one scholar calls a “legacy of racial mistrust.” There had been an African-American population here almost from the start, but there was never much pressure for blacks and whites to mingle. Yet unlike most Southern cities, we avoided the crucible of civil-rights demonstrations.
Unlike most northern cities, we had a 100-year history of slaveholding. The city’s founders came upriver from New Orleans, and the Mississippi River kept our ties to the South alive through the Civil War. Louis might be Midwestern, but its history is Southern. Louis? Why was segregation more dramatic here than it was in similar Midwestern cities? And why hasn’t it lifted as quickly? It also determines our future, because if you make a transparent map of racial segregation and lay it over other maps-political power, cultural influence, health, wealth, education, and employment-the pattern repeats. And race plays a role in every one of those divisions. Two states sharing a metro area and vying for its resources. Blocks, gangs, and country clubs, each with their own exclusions. Gates and wrought-iron fences that segregate wealth. What those maps don’t show are the ghost neighborhoods, once-black communities ripped out of both city and county. Louis County, coloring in 90 municipalities like it’s election night. Another uses stark black and white to show the Delmar Divide, named by the BBC (95 percent black north of Delmar Boulevard almost two-thirds white south of it). One starts out hot red or orange for the African-American population in the city’s core and cools to shades of Caucasian blue in the suburbs. This article first appeared in the November 2014 issue, in the wake of Michael Brown's death.
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