Segregation in St. Louis-Dismantling the Divide

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04 NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY: SEGREGATION AND TENUOUS DIVERSITY From the early 1970s to the present, a third migration has taken place in our region. Middle-class African Americans and whites began to move out of many parts of North St. Louis County as working-class African Americans from the City of St. Louis began to move in. It’s a particularly complicated and emotional piece of the region’s recent history, presenting both challenges and opportunities. 48 Segregation in St. Louis
Racially similar communities Missouri Wonk calculated a “dissimilarity index” (Figure 14) to capture the present day impact of decades of policies and practices enforcing segregation in the St. Louis region. The dissimilarity index is a common measure of segregation. Specifically, it is a numerical comparison of the racial composition of an area relative to the overall racial composition of the larger geographic area in which it is located—in this case it is the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Areas in red, orange, and darker yellow in Figure 14 represent places in our region where residents are more likely to live among neighbors who are the same race, with red representing the most homogenous, or racially similar, areas. Many of the factors to be discussed in this chapter have contributed to creating suburban communities in the west, southwest, and southern parts of St. Louis County that are almost exclusively white. Conversely, many areas in North St. Louis and North St. Louis County also score high on the dissimilarity index. These areas also reflect policies and practices that have increasingly forced many working-class African Americans into segregated areas with less opportunity. The green and lighter green areas of Figure 14 indicate areas of diversity, with dark green being the most diverse. Note the areas of relatively high diversity emerging from the southern half of the City of St. Louis and extending northwest through St. Louis County into communities such as Hazelwood and Florissant. A third migration: Segregation of African Americans in inner-ring suburbs Despite the challenges that we have reviewed, laws and protections have had some impact on increased housing mobility for African Americans in our region in the past 50 years. Todd Swanstrom, of the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, notes that middle-class African American home ownership and rental opportunities have increased in several St. Louis suburbs, particularly in Creve Coeur, Bridgeton, Hazelwood, Florissant, Bel-Nor, and Pasadena Hills (personal communication, January 2018). Additionally, several low-income African American neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis have experienced increases in their white population, including parts of the West End, Tower Grove and South St. Louis. But this has also raised the risk of gentrification, which will be addressed in the next chapter. Figure 14. Dissimilarity Index. In most parts of St. Louis people live in neighborhoods in which their neighbors are the same race or ethnicity. Highest Near Region Median Lowest St. Louis County Source: American Community Survey (ACS), 2016; Brown Longitudinal Tract Database (LTDB); Experian 2016 (4Q) population derived from recent U.S. Census These may be hopeful signs of increasing diversity in pockets throughout the region. On the surface, North St. Louis County, with 45 cities, appears exceptionally diverse. 82 Data from the 2014 American Community Survey put it at 41.3% white and 52.9% African American. 83 Some scholars argue that this indicates a refreshing change that should be supported and maintained. City of St. Louis “Increasing in number and growing rapidly, diverse suburbs have replaced central cities as the places most likely to provide the potential benefits of integrated neighborhoods and schools to whites and nonwhites alike,” write scholars 84(p. 1) Myron Orfield and Thomas F. Luce. Orfield and Luce go on to argue that American suburbs taken as a group are now more diverse than cities, and these diverse suburban communities could potentially carry tremendous political power if their diversity is supported and maintained. N Dismantling the Divide 49
Page 1 and 2: SEGREGATION IN ST. LOUIS: DISMANTLI
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments..
Page 5 and 6: Thanks as well to Ellen Futterman,
Page 7 and 8: Health disparities in St. Louis One
Page 9 and 10: different concentrations of affluen
Page 11 and 12: 2018 SCHOOLS ARE MORE SEGREGATED NO
Page 13 and 14: Figure 3. National barriers to achi
Page 15 and 16: James Byard, Washington University
Page 17 and 18: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Tense begin
Page 19 and 20: Figure 5. The Great Migration: Afri
Page 21 and 22: Homes were burned and hundreds of A
Page 23 and 24: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jason Purne
Page 25 and 26: Figure 6. 1937 St. Louis Residentia
Page 27 and 28: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Missouri Hi
Page 29 and 30: The move to greener suburbs By the
Page 31 and 32: The suburbs became places of power
Page 33 and 34: Rise of zoning in St. Louis As ment
Page 35 and 36: Multi-family prohibition Most of th
Page 37 and 38: Figure 12. County equivalent zoning
Page 39 and 40: Qualified buyers in St. Louis 80,00
Page 41 and 42: Racial steering By the late 1960s,
Page 43 and 44: Missouri History Museum Missouri Hi
Page 45 and 46: Eminent domain The Mill Creek Valle
Page 47 and 48: Figure 13. How TIFs work. TIFs redi
Page 49: James Byard, Washington University
Page 53 and 54: City of St. Louis St. Louis County
Page 55 and 56: Much of this early migration of Afr
Page 57 and 58: “There’s just a lot of emotiona
Page 59 and 60: Conclusion So where does this leave
Page 61 and 62: BUCHANAN V. WARLEY DECISION Supreme
Page 63 and 64: ELMWOOD PARK “RENEWED” BY CITY
Page 65 and 66: MCREE TOWN REDEVELOPMENT CORPORATIO
Page 67 and 68: “People sleeping in cars with chi
Page 69 and 70: Figure 17. Which cities and regions
Page 71 and 72: Tony Messenger Christian Gooden, St
Page 73 and 74: Derek, Brandy, and family of grass
Page 75 and 76: Figure 20. Which areas of St. Louis
Page 77 and 78: A lack of transportation forced LaT
Page 79 and 80: LaTosha Boulevard in North St. Loui
Page 81 and 82: Figure 26. In which areas of St. Lo
Page 83 and 84: Danielle and family Danielle lived
Page 85 and 86: EVICTION Figure 28. In which areas
Page 87 and 88: Conclusion The configuration of nei
Page 89 and 90: “For that three hours we were all
Page 91 and 92: Stephanie and Shauna DIVIDES Exclud
Page 93 and 94: Cheeraz “I never felt like I belo
Page 95 and 96: Kevin, Elle, and daughter And yet,
Page 97 and 98: Betsy said We Stories has changed t
Page 99 and 100: For over a century, African America
Page 101 and 102:
In Detroit: Greenlining mortgage-le
Page 103 and 104:
American neighborhoods existing ami
Page 105 and 106:
Require that the existing Legal Ser
Page 107 and 108:
Courtney Chazen, Washington Univers
Page 109 and 110:
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Op
Page 111 and 112:
Indices included in Chapter 5 The I
Page 113 and 114:
The Retail Employment Access Index
Page 115 and 116:
44. Preliminary Report upon the Bus
Page 117 and 118:
114. Petrella C. The Resegregation
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Segregation in St. Louis-Dismantling the Divide

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