The events of this past August have thrust my hometown into the spotlight, just not for the reason I would have liked. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri effectively brought national attention to St. Louis and its race relations. It is important to note that Ferguson is not the city of St. Louis, but rather a separate municipality with its own police department and government, but for ease of discussion I will use the term St. Louis to mean the city and St. Louis County. I would like to illuminate the situation in St. Louis, as seen from the perspective of someone who lives there.
The history of race relations in St. Louis is more than the shooting of Michael Brown; it is a complex and developing story. I want to explain how St. Louis understands race relations in its past and how that understanding can be used by those who do not live in St. Louis, Missouri.
For many reading this, the only information they know about St. Louis is that it is the home of Washington University in St. Louis and more recently it is the metropolitan area where Michael Brown was killed. What escapes the focus of some in light of the Michael Brown shooting is the history St. Louis possesses in regards to race.
Consider the issue of slavery and the Dred Scott case. Missouri found itself divided on the issue of slavery: With no majority opinion on the issue, both abolitionists and proponents of slavery were vocal in the region. This tension heightened with the Dred Scott case, the outcome of which set a legal precedent for slave ownership in free states. What is interesting is that initially in St. Louis, Dred Scott won his case.
Historically, Missouri had a "once free, always free" policy for people who had been slaves, which meant that if a slave had ever been living as a free man in a free state, he would be considered free. St. Louis and its surrounding areas sided with Dred Scott on the issue of his citizenship, a decision that speaks to the situation in St. Louis regarding slavery and race at this historical moment. St. Louis, in a time of racial based slavery, freed a former slave, perhaps teaching a lesson to the country today about a small stance against a larger injustice.
Later, during the Civil War, Missouri was a border state, meaning some living in the state sided with the North, or United States, and some with the South, or Confederate States, when war initially broke out.
To this day, the discussion of the Civil War in the Missouri classroom is one that is difficult to navigate. My state has a history of Confederate soldiers, as well as Union ones, which is accented with historic Underground Railroad stops. Missouri preserves both Confederate and Union uniforms in its museums and discusses the experiences of both sides in the war.
What makes me proud of the way Missouri classrooms handle the Civil War, especially those classrooms located in the St. Louis area, is the understanding that the Civil War was a part of our history, a part that plays a key role in present day race relations.
St. Louis discusses its complicated past, rather than trying to hide it. By embracing some of the uglier sides of our history, Missouri shows the rest of the country how to use historic race relations to facilitate a discussion about modern-day ones.
After the Civil War, the migration of former slaves from the South to the North gave rise to many new immigrants to the city of St. Louis. However, these new arrivals were quickly moved along, not by the white political elite, but by leaders in the black community who felt they might be an economic drain on those free blacks who were living in the city already. Immigration of former slaves and their descendents began to slow down, only to pick back up again about 20 years later.
For a time, St. Louis remained relatively similar to the rest of the country in terms of race relations. The one exception to this is the Civil Rights movement – St. Louis saw no riots during the Civil Rights movement. There is often confusion that East St. Louis is in the state of Missouri and is part of the city of St. Louis, when in fact, East St. Louis is in Illinois. There were infamous riots in East St. Louis around this time, but these riots remained in Illinois, while St. Louis saw relatively peaceful demonstrations.
Perhaps the most interesting discussion of race relations in St. Louis centers on the public school system. Because of the passage of many acts of housing segregation throughout history in St. Louis, the development of separate neighborhoods for each race also meant that schools, even after they were "desegregated" by law, remained effectively segregated. Even today the public high schools are strongly segregated by race, although like with most public schools, the school one attends is determined by their address.
Today there are no official restrictions on where one can live based on race, yet there still exists a divide in the location where people live in St. Louis. I am not proud of this, nor do I think it is right; that is just the way it is. In an effort to equalize education, St. Louis has created opportunities for better education in programs that allow students to travel to schools with better educational records. By admitting to the differences between public schools in the area and attempting to fix them, St. Louis is making an effort to better the situation. While it is still not perfect, there is attention brought to the issue, a statement that may not hold true for other areas across the country.
The St. Louis I know is not the one the nation thinks it knows. My town has a history of extreme race relations. This is not to justify its history, but to note that its complexities have been ignored.
St. Louis is more than the death of one; it is the product of the lives and deaths of many. St. Louis provides us with a history of race relations that sparks conversation about its development and manifestation across the nation's history.
Alli Buettner is a College sophomore from St. Louis, Missouri.
