A Thriving Black Neighborhood That Was Destroyed
Growing up in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood in the 1950s, Gwen Moore walked to the St. Louis Public Library every Saturday morning. The stately downtown building was one of the closest public places that was not segregated, and Moore and her siblings each checked out six books to read and study. The next week, they would do it all over again. “My mother preached education to the skies,” Moore said, “To the point where we were like, Please.” When she was about 10 years old in 1960, her family moved away. Their neighborhood, about 100 city blocks on the western edge of downtown, had been leveled in one of the largest urban renewal efforts in American history. Of its 20,000 residents, 95 percent were Black. “Just about every city in America has their Mill Creek Valley,” said Jody Sowell, the president and chief executive of the Missouri History Museum, which is telling the story of the neighborhood in a new exhibition, “Mill Creek: Black Metropolis.” The showcase is set to open Nov. 15, and it will run through July 12. “Almost every city has some chapter in the story,” Sowell said. Among the communities with their own versions of the story are Paradise Valley in Detroit, Kenyon-Barr in Cincinnati and the Jefferson Street corridor in Nashville. Groups and museums in those cities are similarly revisiting and preserving their neighborhood’s pasts through exhibitions, storytelling projects and community engagement programs. Moore did not learn more of Mill Creek’s story until she was an adult researching newspaper articles about the neighborhood. She was shocked to see Mill Creek Valley, also known as Mill Creek, described as a slum. City and federal documents used the term “slum clearance.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the area in a series of articles in 1948 as the city’s “No. 1 Eyesore.” Moore lived a different story. “I was a kid. I thought it was ideal,” she said. Moore is now the Missouri History Museum’s curator of urban landscape and community identity, and the content lead for the exhibition. She drew upon her memories and research to tell a fuller story of a neighborhood that was home to entrepreneurs, entertainers, educators and activists, who were forced to live there and in other select areas because of housing covenants and redlining. The Mill Creek Valley exhibition includes timelines and photos of the once-dense neighborhood, profiles of its noted and everyday residents, and maps. Because so much of Mill Creek was destroyed, the exhibition is lighter on objects. It does include stained glass windows from the demolished Union Memorial United Methodist Church; a crocheted bedspread by a resident, Frances Ross; dental tools belonging to one of the neighborhood’s medical professionals, Dr. Ivan James Sr.; and tools from Collier Brothers Auto Body, one of the city’s oldest African American family-owned businesses, still operating today. The entertainer and activist Josephine Baker grew up in Mill Creek Valley, performing sidewalk skits for strangers who walked by the Booker T. Washington Theater. Annie Malone and Madam C.J. Walker worked together in the hair care business there, later parting ways to make their fortunes. And it was where the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P. and other organizations started their earliest civil rights battles. While segregation was illegal in St. Louis except for in marriage and public education, there were places where Black people knew they were not welcome. “I always use the term segregation and congregation,” Moore said. “Black people were limited in where they could live. But, on the other hand, there was congregation. Black people were drawn to this neighborhood because of this rich Black culture: the music, the sports, the businesses, the schools.” Mill Creek has powered the story of St. Louis almost from its beginning.
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