# data[].attributes.body
It was a series of collective forces that enabled the destruction of Mill Creek Valley. No personal lives were taken into consideration, but many lives were affected.

# data[].attributes.body
This view of Mill Creek Valley is a great representation of what the area looked like during the process of reconstruction was taking place. As you can see it wasn't large and it wasn't "fancy", but it was home to many people.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
The Missouri Historical Society is ... Missouri Historical Society and was founded in 1866.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aerial View of Mill Creek Valley from Olive and Vandeventer east. 1 September 1965.

# data[].attributes.body
The Housing Act of 1949 was a collective project aiming towards decent homes and a suitable living environment for every American family. This act also set policies to help the community advance toward that goal.

# data[].attributes.body
Mill Creek Valley During the renewal:

DeLoach, Ryan, and Jenn DeRose. “Urban Renewal and Mill Creek Valley.” Decoding the City, www.decodingstl.org/urban-renewal-and-mill-creek-valley/#:~:text=After%20the%20U.S.%20Congress%20passed,the%201947%20Comprehensive%20City%20Plan. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.

Interviews:
Prince, Vida "Sister" 1993 "Race and Memory". Missouri Historical Society. December 2, 1993

Prince, Vida "Sister" 1993 "Race and Memory In St. Louis". Missouri Historical Society. September 6, 1994

Buchanan, Jeffrey D. Washington University in St. Louis Open Scholarship Repository, openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1839&context=law_urbanlaw. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.

Society, Missouri Historical. “Aerial View of Mill Creek Valley from Olive and Vandeventer East. 1 September 1965.” The Missouri Historical Society Is ... Missouri Historical Society and Was Founded in 1866., mohistory.org/collections/item/N35686. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.

Society, Missouri Historical. “Demolition in Progress for the Mill Creek Valley Project.” The Missouri Historical Society Is ... Missouri Historical Society and Was Founded in 1866., mohistory.org/collections/item/P0243-12826-01-4a. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.

# data[].attributes.body
The Model City program was focusing on creating and maintaining an exemplar representation of certain principles, concepts or standards that the city wishes to uphold.

Mill Creek Valley was a part of the city that did not fit into the "Model City" that St. Louis had for itself.

The program was launched by St. Louis in 1966. It looked at the ghetto as having an insufficient or misdirected series of subsystems including housing, employment, welfare, education, health, crime, culture and transportation. Through changes implemented into the community, they hopes they could "fill the gaps" and uplift the area.

# data[].attributes.body
The poverty program in Saint Louis was managed through the St. Louis Human Development Corporation. The HDC divided its target areas into districts.

The split in citizen organization between the public housing and urban renewal areas was to continue to bedevil project planning.

# data[].attributes.body
The National Housing Act was passed in 1949. After the Act, cities across the country were given power and resources and were ordered to be cleared to make room for the enactment of the Comprehensive City Plan of 1947.

The 1947 Comprehensive City Plan necessitated the removal of substantial portions of land at the heart of the city. Areas labeled as "blighted" were identified as requiring urgent restoration, while areas labeled "obsolete" were suggested for complete reconstruction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1947 City Plan
The St. Louis City Plan Commission became a dominant force in St. Louis city planning throughout 1920s and 30s under the leadership of Harland Bartholomew and came to influence city planning across the nation. As early as 1936, the City Planning Commission began to identify the first signs of central city abandonment in St. Louis, warning, "if adequate measures are not taken, the city is faced with gradual economic and social collapse. The older central areas of the city are being abandoned, and this insidious trend will continue until the entire city is engulfed."
Federal Funding For Urban Renewal
After the U.S. Congress passed the National Housing Act in 1949, power and resources were pumped into cities across the country for the clearance and assembling of land, making it possible for the city of St. Louis to enact the recommendations of the 1947 Comprehensive City Plan. In an editorial article published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 12, 1950, St. Louis Mayor Joseph Darst outlined how St. Louis planned to take advantage of the new law:

"The novel and extensive Federal Housing Act of 1949 is a godsend to all cities cursed with the stubborn related problems of slums, blight and obsolescence-or in simple terms, inadequate and insufficient housing. St. Louis is no exception, and we are making strenuous preparations to take fullest advantage of the remedies afforded by this comprehensive, far-seeing legislation..."

"The excessive cost of ground in the slum and blighted areas has always been a major stumbling block in previous attempts at redevelopment...Thanks to Title I, a way has finally been evolved to bring down costs of the ground, place it once more in the competitive market and make it attractive in the eyes of investors. The St. Louis program is gathering momentum, and the next few years should witness a vast transformation of whole neighborhoods that will change the very face of the city."
Plaza Square Urban Renewal Project

Preliminary plans of Plaza Square and a picture shortly after completion of the project in 1961.
St. Louis's first project benefiting from this law was the Plaza Urban Renewal Area. Since 1907, city leaders had been developing plans for redevelopment of the area, and many local politicians described the area near city hall as an eyesore. A year after the creation of the Plaza Urban Renewal Area in 1950, the area became a Federally-assisted Title I Urban Renewal Project. That same year, the state of Missouri created the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority in order to capitalize on the funds being doled out by the federal government for slum clearance.

After initial difficulties gaining voter support for the city's share of the financing, a $1.5 million bond issue passed in 1953 to help get the project off the ground. As the project launched, city leaders praised the marriage of public and private investment and began to envision ways in which this new partnership could be used to help rebuild the city.
Mill Creek Valley Urban Renewal Project
The Plaza Square Project paved the way for St. Louis's largest urban renewal project, Mill Creek Valley. Like Plaza Square, city planners had long dreamed of clearing and recreating Mill Creek Valley. Following on the heels of the 1947 Comprehensive City Plan, the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority produced a report charting the substandard housing conditions in Mill Creek Valley. According to the report, 99% of the structures in the area were in need of major repairs, 80% were without private baths and toilets, and 67% did not even have running water. On August 7, 1954, Mayor Raymond Tucker announced plans to demolish commercial and residential buildings across 454 acres in Mill Creek Valley. Following his announcement, front-page headlines praised Tucker's bold vision to make St. Louis home to the nation's largest urban-renewal project.
Mayor Raymond Tucker (on right) standing on a rooftop overlooking Mill Creek Valley in 1956.
When local residents heard the news that their neighborhood had been chosen for demolition, many protested, claiming that their neighborhood was not nearly as dilapidated as many others in the city. The Citizens' Council on Housing and Community Planning defended the choice of the site by arguing, "No more dramatic example may be found than these 54 blocks located in the very center of our city...People going and coming from work through this district are offended by the state of decay they witness on all sides. Unfortunately, too, every visitor who arrives in our city by train is given a poor impression of St. Louis as he or she is transported immediately through such dismal districts."
Mill Creek Valley after demolition. Financing the Project
The Mill Creek Valley clearance project was paid for by a variety of sources, within the public and private sector. The main source of funding came from the Federal Government, which allocated finances for slum clearance through Title I of the Housing Act of 1949.

The Board of Aldermen voted 27 to 1 to clear the neighborhood on Friday, March 28th of 1958, according the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The only dissenting vote was from Alderman Archie Blaine, who had 97% of the proposed clearance site in his ward, which was then in the 9th Ward. He voted no because there was "no provision for low income residents" for re-location. He told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he was "in favor of better housing, but not in favor of moving slums to other parts of the city."

According to a 2009 article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch reminiscing on the project, Saint Louis City voters "overwhelmingly approved a $10 million bond issue for demolition, on the promise that the federal government would reimburse most of it."

The true net cost of clearing Mill Creek Valley, according to The Other Missouri History: Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk, totaled $34,400,000. The City of St. Louis paid $11,400,000, and the Federal Government paid $23,000,000. Private investments in the project totaled $250,000,000.

These numbers conflict with those identified in " History of Renewa l," a technical report written in 1971 on development programs in St. Louis, which was paid for by a grant under the Housing Act of 1949. This document states that the City of St. Louis would contribute $7,037,058, the Federal Government would contribute $21,111,174, and private investors would contribute $125,936,232.

In reality, the City of St. Louis payed $11,400,000 to remove one of the most densely populated areas of the city and replace it with mostly nothing.

Interestingly, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, a strong supporter of the plan, had investments in the renewal fund for a land-clearance effort tied to Mill Creek Valley. According to "The History of Renewal" document, the "Urban Redevelopment Corporation of St. Louis was formed to redevelop the the Plaza Project. This corporation, a cooperative effort of local concerns was initiated by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which pledged $250,000 to start a renewal fund. Seventy firms subscribed $2 million to provide the equity for the project."

Identifying other private sources will require further research to identify individual funders.
Newspaper Editorials and Public Perception
The strong public support for the clearance plan from all sectors made finding dissenting editorials difficult. In fact, Ernest Calloway, president of the St, Louis Chapter of the NAACP, said in a speech that the clearance project would " revive the heart" of St. Louis and "slow down the stampede to the suburbs." The authors of this paper are certain that dissenting views must exist, but were not able to locate these editorials within the date ranges close to the many editorials and positive-leaning articles on the project published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, whose enthusiasm for the project was made crystal clear in its " Progress or Decay " series on the subject of Mill Creek Valley.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch, in a 1957 article on the proposed replacement for the "slum clearance project," discusses the project's proposed replacement - housing for 2,100 people planned with "calculated casualness" to replace the "slum."

The choice of the word "slum" for the area and the flattering illustrations of the proposed street art and excited descriptions of the proposed superblocks also help to reveal the St. Louis Post Dispatch 's slant in favor of the clearance. Nearly every mention of Mill Creek Valley's clearance, in both articles and editorials, mentions the decay of the buildings and abysmal conditions residents were living in, without discussing the vibrant community that existed within the neighborhood's boundaries.

In a 1958 editorial, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an article hailing the project as a progressive way to redirect the population and industry back towards the Mississippi River. The article suggests that the clearance plan should be emulated in other cities with troubled neighborhoods. The editorial was written by Joseph R. Passonneau, dean of the School of Architecture at Washington University at the time of his opinion piece. The editorial also boasts that the slums, which he claims were ruined beyond repair, would be replaced by the "finest neighborhood" in St. Louis, housing 2100 residents.

A few years later, in 1970, years after the abandoned site was nicknamed "Hiroshima Flats," the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an article calling the project a success.

One editorial among many stood out for its melancholy take on the clearance. The article, written in October of 1959 by St. Louis Post Dispatch staffer Jack Rice, talks of the Victorian era mansions that looters stripped under the cover of darkness in the abandoned neighborhoods. The article speaks of the houses and their history with remorse for lost mansions and neighborhood status, but does not lament the fate of the residents displaced by the clearance project.

The editorial by Rice likened the draining of the disease-spreading Laclede Lake to the clearing of Mill Creek Valley. He concluded that "progress won" when the lake that Pierre Laclede created was drained for health reasons, and that progress won again with the destruction of Mill Creek Valley.

Again, further research into The Argus and The American will be needed to have a well rounded understanding of how all segments of St. Louis felt about the clearing project.
Similar Projects
Multiple cities across the United States took advantage of Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 to blight and clear large tracts of land in the middle of, or nearby, downtown districts. Most, but not all, examples of clearance that took place near the time frame of the Mill Creek Valley project involve neighborhoods with majority African American populations, which were displaced and resettled in public housing projects.
oon to be displaced youth of 98th and 99th Streets.
Just a few hours drive from St. Louis, 50,000 families were displaced in Chicago due to blighting by the Chicago Land Clearance Commission from 1948-1963. This was due in part to the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway and the construction of housing projects, which replaced neighborhoods that the Chicago Land Clearance Commission deemed as slums throughout the city.

Bronzeville, a predominantly African American neighborhood in Chicago that was known as the Black Metropolis, was similar to Mill Creek Valley in that it was a hub for artists and musicians; Louis Armstrong and Sam Cooke played clubs in Bronzeville, and famous black actors and other luminary figures lived and worked in this neighborhood. The large chunks of Bronzeville were blighted and turned into public housing projects like the infamous Robert Taylor Homes in the early 1960's, due to city officials concerns about the neighborhood. The Robert Taylor Homes buildings were demolished 1995-1998, after the structures had long since decayed and the residents were subjected to crime and failing services. Some of Bronzeville remains today, with plaques and historic sites to mark the area, unlike Mill Creek Valley's erasure from maps and memories.

However, the plan did not achieve its desired goals, and residents continued to live in substandard housing after the Baltimore Plan ran out of funding and credibility. Despite exploring other tactics to deal with blight, Baltimore also razed neighborhoods using Title I of the Housing Act - many families were displaced due to blighting and eminent domain acquisitions for highway construction. As Emily Badger writes in a Washington Post article responding to the death of Freddie Grey, "from 1951 to 1971, 80 to 90 percent of the 25,000 families displaced in Baltimore to build new highways, schools and housing projects were black. Their neighborhoods, already disinvested and deemed dispensable, were sliced into pieces, the parks where their children played bulldozed."
Conclusion
In project after project, whether in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, or Baltimore, a common theme emerged; nearly every area cleared in city after city contained a large percentage of African American residents, leading many to equate "urban renewal" with "negro removal." Many of these areas were cleared and left vacant for years, if not decades, before the development promised took place, earning areas like Mill Creek Valley the infamous nickname "Hiroshima Flats." Some federal urban renewal laws required that compensation be awarded to those who were displaced to cover the costs of new housing, while others did not. Even when displacement took place under laws that required compensation in St. Louis, only about half of the African Americans displaced were offered any type of relocation assistance. When relocation assistance was offered, many of these residents felt that the price they paid was much steeper than what they got in return. Their lives had been disrupted, their roots upended, and many found themselves moving over and over again in an attempt to escape the urban renewal bulldozer.
Bibliography
"A Retrospective Look at the Clark-North Avenue SW Corner." James Kilmer History: North & Clark Retrospective, (N.p., n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

Abbot, Mark. "The 1947 Comprehensive City Plan and Harland Bartholomew's St. Louis," in St. Louis Plans: The Ideal and the Real St. Louis, edited by Mark Tranel, (Missouri Historical Society Press, 2007).

Baumhauf, Richard. "Progress or Decay? St. Louis Must Choose." PROGRESS OR DECAY? ST. LOUIS MUST CHOOSE. University of Missouri - St. Louis, n.d., accessed May 8, 2017.

Bloom, Nicholas Dagen. Merchant of Illusion James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004).

Conn, Steven. Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Ernest Calloway Speech, March 17, 1958. University of Missouri - St. Louis, n.d., accessed May 8, 2017.

Gordon, Colin. Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

"History of Bronzeville," Bronzeville Area Residents' and Commerce Council, (N.p, n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

McRoberts, Flynn. "Robert Taylor Homes Public-housing Project," Chicagotribune.com, August 27, 2008, accessed May 8, 2017.

Rothstein, Richard. "The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, " (Economic Policy Institute, 2014).

Sandweiss, Eric. St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

Schweber, Nate. "A Community Erased by Slum Clearance Is Reunited," The New York Times, October 9, 2011, accessed May 8, 2017.

Spencer, Thomas. The Other Missouri History Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2004).

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (St. Louis: City Planning Commission, 1971).

Taylor, Dorceta. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 254.

"Urban Decay in St. Louis" (St. Louis: Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Washington University, 1972).

"Urban Renewal," Encyclopedia of Chicago, (N.p., n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

"Urban Decay in St. Louis" (St. Louis: Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Washington University, 1972), 13-14.

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (St. Louis: City Planning Commission, 1971), 12.

St. Louis Development Program, 12.

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (City Plan Commission, 1971), 19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1947 City Plan The St. Louis City Plan Commission became a dominant force in St. Louis city planning throughout 1920s and 30s under the leadership of Harland Bartholomew and came to influence city planning across the nation. As early as 1936, the City Planning Commission began to identify the first signs of central city abandonment in St.

# data[].attributes.body
The Urban renewal project destroyed the Mill Creek Valley community. Historic structures were destroyed, low-income families were displaced and small businesses were removed. It ended up doing more harm for the locals than good.

# data[].attributes.body
The people who lived in Mill Creek Valley, look back on their time with joy. They knew they didn't live a life of luxury but that didn't stop them from making memories with what little they did have.

# data[].attributes.body
How can we use others lived experiences, and the past built environment, to gain understanding on how and why the space was valued?

How can we use their words to explore why the space was valued differently by various groups of people?

# data[].attributes.body
Mayor Raymond Tucker (right) and  Sidney Maestre (left) looking at Mill Creek Valley before the scheduled demolition. Mayor Tucker oversaw the creation of the city plan which included the destruction of "blighted" areas. Many areas picked for urban renewal where predominantly black. Mill Creek was one of the areas selected for the renewal project.

# data[].attributes.body
Welcome to our Padlet. This is a project completed by Kalamazoo College students Christine Burton, Lilibeth Uribe and Sofia Fleming. We are answering the question "How did the 1946 renewal project affect how people viewed Mill Creek Valley and its community?" As you scroll through this project we begin with what Mill Creek was to begin with, who is residents where and how they viewed themselves. Further down we discuss what the project was and why it was undertaken. Finally, we discuss what the effects of the projects where and who occupies the space now.

This project was sponsored by the HILL grant awarded to Kalamazoo College, other projects can be found on the programs homepage: https://hill.kzoo.edu/

# data[].attributes.headline
Decoding the City: Urban Renewal and Mill Creek Valley

# data[].attributes.subject
Decoding the City: Urban Renewal and Mill Creek Valley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1947 City Plan
The St. Louis City Plan Commission became a dominant force in St. Louis city planning throughout 1920s and 30s under the leadership of Harland Bartholomew and came to influence city planning across the nation. As early as 1936, the City Planning Commission began to identify the first signs of central city abandonment in St. Louis, warning, "if adequate measures are not taken, the city is faced with gradual economic and social collapse. The older central areas of the city are being abandoned, and this insidious trend will continue until the entire city is engulfed."
Federal Funding For Urban Renewal
After the U.S. Congress passed the National Housing Act in 1949, power and resources were pumped into cities across the country for the clearance and assembling of land, making it possible for the city of St. Louis to enact the recommendations of the 1947 Comprehensive City Plan. In an editorial article published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 12, 1950, St. Louis Mayor Joseph Darst outlined how St. Louis planned to take advantage of the new law:

"The novel and extensive Federal Housing Act of 1949 is a godsend to all cities cursed with the stubborn related problems of slums, blight and obsolescence-or in simple terms, inadequate and insufficient housing. St. Louis is no exception, and we are making strenuous preparations to take fullest advantage of the remedies afforded by this comprehensive, far-seeing legislation..."

"The excessive cost of ground in the slum and blighted areas has always been a major stumbling block in previous attempts at redevelopment...Thanks to Title I, a way has finally been evolved to bring down costs of the ground, place it once more in the competitive market and make it attractive in the eyes of investors. The St. Louis program is gathering momentum, and the next few years should witness a vast transformation of whole neighborhoods that will change the very face of the city."
Plaza Square Urban Renewal Project

Preliminary plans of Plaza Square and a picture shortly after completion of the project in 1961.
St. Louis's first project benefiting from this law was the Plaza Urban Renewal Area. Since 1907, city leaders had been developing plans for redevelopment of the area, and many local politicians described the area near city hall as an eyesore. A year after the creation of the Plaza Urban Renewal Area in 1950, the area became a Federally-assisted Title I Urban Renewal Project. That same year, the state of Missouri created the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority in order to capitalize on the funds being doled out by the federal government for slum clearance.

After initial difficulties gaining voter support for the city's share of the financing, a $1.5 million bond issue passed in 1953 to help get the project off the ground. As the project launched, city leaders praised the marriage of public and private investment and began to envision ways in which this new partnership could be used to help rebuild the city.
Mill Creek Valley Urban Renewal Project
The Plaza Square Project paved the way for St. Louis's largest urban renewal project, Mill Creek Valley. Like Plaza Square, city planners had long dreamed of clearing and recreating Mill Creek Valley. Following on the heels of the 1947 Comprehensive City Plan, the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority produced a report charting the substandard housing conditions in Mill Creek Valley. According to the report, 99% of the structures in the area were in need of major repairs, 80% were without private baths and toilets, and 67% did not even have running water. On August 7, 1954, Mayor Raymond Tucker announced plans to demolish commercial and residential buildings across 454 acres in Mill Creek Valley. Following his announcement, front-page headlines praised Tucker's bold vision to make St. Louis home to the nation's largest urban-renewal project.
Mayor Raymond Tucker (on right) standing on a rooftop overlooking Mill Creek Valley in 1956.
When local residents heard the news that their neighborhood had been chosen for demolition, many protested, claiming that their neighborhood was not nearly as dilapidated as many others in the city. The Citizens' Council on Housing and Community Planning defended the choice of the site by arguing, "No more dramatic example may be found than these 54 blocks located in the very center of our city...People going and coming from work through this district are offended by the state of decay they witness on all sides. Unfortunately, too, every visitor who arrives in our city by train is given a poor impression of St. Louis as he or she is transported immediately through such dismal districts."
Mill Creek Valley after demolition. Financing the Project
The Mill Creek Valley clearance project was paid for by a variety of sources, within the public and private sector. The main source of funding came from the Federal Government, which allocated finances for slum clearance through Title I of the Housing Act of 1949.

The Board of Aldermen voted 27 to 1 to clear the neighborhood on Friday, March 28th of 1958, according the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The only dissenting vote was from Alderman Archie Blaine, who had 97% of the proposed clearance site in his ward, which was then in the 9th Ward. He voted no because there was "no provision for low income residents" for re-location. He told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he was "in favor of better housing, but not in favor of moving slums to other parts of the city."

According to a 2009 article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch reminiscing on the project, Saint Louis City voters "overwhelmingly approved a $10 million bond issue for demolition, on the promise that the federal government would reimburse most of it."

The true net cost of clearing Mill Creek Valley, according to The Other Missouri History: Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk, totaled $34,400,000. The City of St. Louis paid $11,400,000, and the Federal Government paid $23,000,000. Private investments in the project totaled $250,000,000.

These numbers conflict with those identified in " History of Renewa l," a technical report written in 1971 on development programs in St. Louis, which was paid for by a grant under the Housing Act of 1949. This document states that the City of St. Louis would contribute $7,037,058, the Federal Government would contribute $21,111,174, and private investors would contribute $125,936,232.

In reality, the City of St. Louis payed $11,400,000 to remove one of the most densely populated areas of the city and replace it with mostly nothing.

Interestingly, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, a strong supporter of the plan, had investments in the renewal fund for a land-clearance effort tied to Mill Creek Valley. According to "The History of Renewal" document, the "Urban Redevelopment Corporation of St. Louis was formed to redevelop the the Plaza Project. This corporation, a cooperative effort of local concerns was initiated by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which pledged $250,000 to start a renewal fund. Seventy firms subscribed $2 million to provide the equity for the project."

Identifying other private sources will require further research to identify individual funders.
Newspaper Editorials and Public Perception
The strong public support for the clearance plan from all sectors made finding dissenting editorials difficult. In fact, Ernest Calloway, president of the St, Louis Chapter of the NAACP, said in a speech that the clearance project would " revive the heart" of St. Louis and "slow down the stampede to the suburbs." The authors of this paper are certain that dissenting views must exist, but were not able to locate these editorials within the date ranges close to the many editorials and positive-leaning articles on the project published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, whose enthusiasm for the project was made crystal clear in its " Progress or Decay " series on the subject of Mill Creek Valley.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch, in a 1957 article on the proposed replacement for the "slum clearance project," discusses the project's proposed replacement - housing for 2,100 people planned with "calculated casualness" to replace the "slum."

The choice of the word "slum" for the area and the flattering illustrations of the proposed street art and excited descriptions of the proposed superblocks also help to reveal the St. Louis Post Dispatch 's slant in favor of the clearance. Nearly every mention of Mill Creek Valley's clearance, in both articles and editorials, mentions the decay of the buildings and abysmal conditions residents were living in, without discussing the vibrant community that existed within the neighborhood's boundaries.

In a 1958 editorial, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an article hailing the project as a progressive way to redirect the population and industry back towards the Mississippi River. The article suggests that the clearance plan should be emulated in other cities with troubled neighborhoods. The editorial was written by Joseph R. Passonneau, dean of the School of Architecture at Washington University at the time of his opinion piece. The editorial also boasts that the slums, which he claims were ruined beyond repair, would be replaced by the "finest neighborhood" in St. Louis, housing 2100 residents.

A few years later, in 1970, years after the abandoned site was nicknamed "Hiroshima Flats," the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an article calling the project a success.

One editorial among many stood out for its melancholy take on the clearance. The article, written in October of 1959 by St. Louis Post Dispatch staffer Jack Rice, talks of the Victorian era mansions that looters stripped under the cover of darkness in the abandoned neighborhoods. The article speaks of the houses and their history with remorse for lost mansions and neighborhood status, but does not lament the fate of the residents displaced by the clearance project.

The editorial by Rice likened the draining of the disease-spreading Laclede Lake to the clearing of Mill Creek Valley. He concluded that "progress won" when the lake that Pierre Laclede created was drained for health reasons, and that progress won again with the destruction of Mill Creek Valley.

Again, further research into The Argus and The American will be needed to have a well rounded understanding of how all segments of St. Louis felt about the clearing project.
Similar Projects
Multiple cities across the United States took advantage of Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 to blight and clear large tracts of land in the middle of, or nearby, downtown districts. Most, but not all, examples of clearance that took place near the time frame of the Mill Creek Valley project involve neighborhoods with majority African American populations, which were displaced and resettled in public housing projects.
oon to be displaced youth of 98th and 99th Streets.
Just a few hours drive from St. Louis, 50,000 families were displaced in Chicago due to blighting by the Chicago Land Clearance Commission from 1948-1963. This was due in part to the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway and the construction of housing projects, which replaced neighborhoods that the Chicago Land Clearance Commission deemed as slums throughout the city.

Bronzeville, a predominantly African American neighborhood in Chicago that was known as the Black Metropolis, was similar to Mill Creek Valley in that it was a hub for artists and musicians; Louis Armstrong and Sam Cooke played clubs in Bronzeville, and famous black actors and other luminary figures lived and worked in this neighborhood. The large chunks of Bronzeville were blighted and turned into public housing projects like the infamous Robert Taylor Homes in the early 1960's, due to city officials concerns about the neighborhood. The Robert Taylor Homes buildings were demolished 1995-1998, after the structures had long since decayed and the residents were subjected to crime and failing services. Some of Bronzeville remains today, with plaques and historic sites to mark the area, unlike Mill Creek Valley's erasure from maps and memories.

However, the plan did not achieve its desired goals, and residents continued to live in substandard housing after the Baltimore Plan ran out of funding and credibility. Despite exploring other tactics to deal with blight, Baltimore also razed neighborhoods using Title I of the Housing Act - many families were displaced due to blighting and eminent domain acquisitions for highway construction. As Emily Badger writes in a Washington Post article responding to the death of Freddie Grey, "from 1951 to 1971, 80 to 90 percent of the 25,000 families displaced in Baltimore to build new highways, schools and housing projects were black. Their neighborhoods, already disinvested and deemed dispensable, were sliced into pieces, the parks where their children played bulldozed."
Conclusion
In project after project, whether in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, or Baltimore, a common theme emerged; nearly every area cleared in city after city contained a large percentage of African American residents, leading many to equate "urban renewal" with "negro removal." Many of these areas were cleared and left vacant for years, if not decades, before the development promised took place, earning areas like Mill Creek Valley the infamous nickname "Hiroshima Flats." Some federal urban renewal laws required that compensation be awarded to those who were displaced to cover the costs of new housing, while others did not. Even when displacement took place under laws that required compensation in St. Louis, only about half of the African Americans displaced were offered any type of relocation assistance. When relocation assistance was offered, many of these residents felt that the price they paid was much steeper than what they got in return. Their lives had been disrupted, their roots upended, and many found themselves moving over and over again in an attempt to escape the urban renewal bulldozer.
Bibliography
"A Retrospective Look at the Clark-North Avenue SW Corner." James Kilmer History: North & Clark Retrospective, (N.p., n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

Abbot, Mark. "The 1947 Comprehensive City Plan and Harland Bartholomew's St. Louis," in St. Louis Plans: The Ideal and the Real St. Louis, edited by Mark Tranel, (Missouri Historical Society Press, 2007).

Baumhauf, Richard. "Progress or Decay? St. Louis Must Choose." PROGRESS OR DECAY? ST. LOUIS MUST CHOOSE. University of Missouri - St. Louis, n.d., accessed May 8, 2017.

Bloom, Nicholas Dagen. Merchant of Illusion James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004).

Conn, Steven. Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Ernest Calloway Speech, March 17, 1958. University of Missouri - St. Louis, n.d., accessed May 8, 2017.

Gordon, Colin. Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

"History of Bronzeville," Bronzeville Area Residents' and Commerce Council, (N.p, n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

McRoberts, Flynn. "Robert Taylor Homes Public-housing Project," Chicagotribune.com, August 27, 2008, accessed May 8, 2017.

Rothstein, Richard. "The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, " (Economic Policy Institute, 2014).

Sandweiss, Eric. St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

Schweber, Nate. "A Community Erased by Slum Clearance Is Reunited," The New York Times, October 9, 2011, accessed May 8, 2017.

Spencer, Thomas. The Other Missouri History Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2004).

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (St. Louis: City Planning Commission, 1971).

Taylor, Dorceta. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 254.

"Urban Decay in St. Louis" (St. Louis: Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Washington University, 1972).

"Urban Renewal," Encyclopedia of Chicago, (N.p., n.d.), accessed May 8, 2017.

"Urban Decay in St. Louis" (St. Louis: Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Washington University, 1972), 13-14.

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (St. Louis: City Planning Commission, 1971), 12.

St. Louis Development Program, 12.

St. Louis Development Program, "Technical Report on the History of Renewal" (City Plan Commission, 1971), 19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1947 City Plan The St. Louis City Plan Commission became a dominant force in St. Louis city planning throughout 1920s and 30s under the leadership of Harland Bartholomew and came to influence city planning across the nation. As early as 1936, the City Planning Commission began to identify the first signs of central city abandonment in St.

# data[].attributes.body
The City Hospital No. 2 was located in Mill Creek Valley. It began as a medical college and served largely African American until it the urban renewal project. It held 500 patients and employed at least 70 medically trained individuals. Many other city hospital did not accept or encourage black patients.

# data[].attributes.body
Mill Creek Valley Before 1964:
“A Brief History of St. Louis.” St Louis MO Gov, www.stlouis-mo.gov/visit-play/stlouis-history.cfm#:~:text=Indigenous%20People%20Early%20History%3A%20pre%2D1764&text=The%20indigenous%20people%20in%20the,the%20nickname%20%22Mound%20City%22. Accessed 10 Aug. 2023.

“Comprehensive City Plan 1947.” St Louis MO Gov, www.stlouis-mo.gov/archive/1947-comprehensive-plan/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2023.

DeLoach, Ryan, and Jenn DeRose. “Urban Renewal and Mill Creek Valley.” Decoding the City, www.decodingstl.org/urban-renewal-and-mill-creek-valley/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2023.

City Hospital:
Naffziger, Chris. “Centers of Community That Were Destroyed in the Mill Creek Valley.” St. Louis Magazine, 26 Sept. 2019, www.stlmag.com/history/architecture/centers-of-community-that-were-destroyed-in-the-mill-creek-v/.

Interviews:
Prince, Vida  “Sister.” “Race and Memory.” SoundCloud, Missouri Historical Society. http://on.soundcloud.com/TqVJKj

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Brief History of the City of St. Louis

# data[].attributes.body
Prior to colonization there where many tribes which lived in the upper Mississippi region. These tribes include Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara (St. Louis MO.gov). On the land which is now known as St. Louis, Cahokia mounds dotted the landscape which now is covered by skyscrapers.

When Europeans arrived Mill Creek became a commercial center built around the mills. Overtime railroads became a central part of the area with Union Station opening in 1894. During this time St. Louis had, and maintains, a large immigrant population. Mill Creek Valley was a residential area as well as a commercial one. Many German Immigrants lived in Mill Creek. After the Civil War many Black families moved north. Throughout the 20th century Mill Creek Valley held one of the largest populations of African Americans.

Business and residence filled the area in the 1950s. Mill Creek valley was built to be a community with a mixture of commercial spaces, educational opportunities, religious spaces, homes and housing, workplaces, transportation, and community resources. This diversity of the built environment was made to support a community, this goal and thus the place changed during Urban Renewal.

# data[].attributes.body
Union Station operated between 1864-1978. At the time it was built it was one of the largest stations in the world. It was the largest and busiest in the world by 1894. In 1903 it was expanded in preparation for the 1904 Worlds Fair. At its peak in 1940, 100,000 passengers traveled through each day.

# data[].attributes.body
Many buildings in Mill Creek where residential, and home to families. Often these buildings where owned by landlords and rented out. Many fell into disrepair and/or did not have updated plumbing. These units where a large part of the given reason by the government for destroying Mill Creek. Many of the families where displaced and residential spaces where not rebuilt to hold the original capacity. The Federal Housing Authority built some residential projects in the 1960s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
"I just enjoyed it so much. It's like something I'll never forget. And I look on that coming up as being, I would basically say the best part of my life."

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Interview by Vida "Sister" Prince September 6, 1994

# data[].attributes.body
"It was the worst slum in the city." Spoken by former resident, Isadore Millstone

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Interview by Vida "Sister" Prince December 2, 1993

# data[].attributes.body
The interviewee, Ernestine Newman states, "We were poor, but so was everyone else."

# data[].attributes.headline
Why was the Urban Renewal Project needed?

# data[].attributes.subject
Why was the Urban Renewal Project needed?

# data[].attributes.body
The community was largely affected by this mass destruction of a highly populated area, and doubts began to rise of the motivation behind the destruction. "Federally-assisted Urban Renewal works to encourage private investment, and helps make St. Louis more productive and attractive."

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
A present day (2023) art post located on Market Street in St. Louis commemorating the Mill Creek Valley and those who lived there.

# data[].attributes.body
This predominantly black community was covered in slums and even so, it was home to many people. It was a place children lived and created memories in.
The quote reads, "What we lost in the destruction of our Mill Creek neighborhood was a community we relied on to survive" -Vivian Gibson

# data[].attributes.body
For many people, the reconstruction of Mill Creek Valley, provided a strong sense of hope for a bright future.

"A 1954 survey of Mill Creek Valley made by the Land Clearance Authority... showed that 99% of the structures in the area needed major repairs, 80% were without private bath and toilet, 67% lacked even running water. The infant mortality rate was two times the city average, the crime rate four times. Tragic fires were commonplace. Thousands of outdoor privies perfumed the air, and rats as large as spaniels were not exceptional."

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
(Image is used for scholarly purposes only)

# data[].attributes.headline
One of the highways that was built during the urban renewal project

# data[].attributes.subject
One of the highways that was built during the urban renewal project

# data[].attributes.body
This highway is located on Market St., built as part of the urban renewal project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
(Image is used for scholarly purposes only)

# data[].attributes.headline
What was the impact of the urban renewal project in Mill Creek Valley?

# data[].attributes.subject
What was the impact of the urban renewal project in Mill Creek Valley?

# data[].attributes.body
After completing the urban renewal project, what was once Mill creek valley is now thriving businesses, buildings, and highways. Businesses located on Market St seem to be thriving. The Mill Creek Valley neighborhood has a legacy that will live on for centuries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
(Image is used for scholarly purposes only) 

# data[].attributes.headline
Market St Present day - WELLS FARGO corporation

# data[].attributes.subject
Market St Present day - WELLS FARGO corporation

# data[].attributes.body
The purpose of the urban renewal project was to get rid of "slums" in order to build highways and businesses that look more appealing to the public eye. With the removal of black residents and the demolition of the Mill creek valley neighborhood, businesses like Wells Fargo were built to revamp the old community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
(Video is used for scholarly purposes only)

# data[].attributes.headline
An address of a building that existed in Mill Creek Valley

# data[].attributes.subject
An address of a building that existed in Mill Creek Valley

# data[].attributes.body
An example of an address of a building that existed in Mill creek valley. The address shows where a building stood during the 1940’s. People lived, worked, prayed, and played in this area during that time. For us, this shows the significance of Mill creek valley. The fact that the neighborhood is so memorable to many show’s that it wasn’t just a neighborhood but a loving community that everyone enjoyed living in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
(Image is used for scholarly purposes only)

# data[].attributes.body
The city park stadium was completed in February of 2023. Before the stadium was built, many mill creek valley resident's lived right where the stadium is.

# data[].attributes.body
Recommended Sections: Early memories of Mill Creek 2:30-6:00, school 9:15-12:40, racial difference 16:15-20,

Clarence King lived in Mill Creek Valley next to Union Station. His first memories are of this station which was central to Mill Creek and the people whom he spent time with around the neighborhood.

He says he had everything he wanted in the area. There were 4 grocery stores, and fish and meat markets. He got a job shining shoes at Union Station which he remembers not only fondly but as a formative experience. It taught him to hustle. He saw people from all over the US, it was exciting, and people gave good tips. He would finish his shift around midnight, and walk home without worrying about anyone bothering him. No place was uncomfortable for him in St. Louis.

King states people sent you to school to learn. Not just reading and writing, but the ways of life. He describes his teachers as dedicated and like family, both close to him and having control. He would never bring lunch but buy a sandwich or go home. King remembers having lots of free time, playing basketball, baseball, marbles and going to the Y. St. Louis and Mill Creek where segregated, he states like everywhere at the time. But, he did not have problems with white people as a kid, he would catch a truck to South St. Louis to play pick-up games with whoever was there. This is the way he remembers St. Louis, but he describes his time in service differently.

King recalls being aware of race but it not being uncomfortable during his childhood. He recalls learning that white people had better things, learning words to describe different people, degrading words and others. Downtown he recalls as clearly segregated, but he did not talk about racial clashes when describing his time in Mill Creek. He remembers his neighborhood differently, as a space which seemed to allow racial tensions to fade into the background, beyond the borders of the blocks he remembers as his. He remembers racial discrimination as both “just a way of life” and central to his experiences outside rather than within Mill Creek.

Kings time in Mill Creek is defined by community. It is the place where he grew up as a child and seems untouched in his memory. Despite the destruction of the area, he still thinks of the people of the neighborhood. He keeps up with a few despite the dispersal of the people who lived there.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interview with Clarence King PART ONE, Vida "Sister" Prince Oral History Collection by Missouri Historical Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Clarence King (1930- ): Interviewed on 8 November 1993 -- King lived in Mill Creek near Union Station, shined shoes during WWII, and became a city alderman. He recalls school and how he spent free time. King enlisted at age 15 and was in Japan and the Philippines in 1946. He remembers how the Army segregated cities and towns in foreign cities for black servicemen. King went to work at Anheuser-Busch in 1970 and describes the brewery as the most segregated place in the city. He identified Percy Green and Bill Bailey as two of the city’s most influential civil rights leaders.


Vida “Sister” Prince was born in 1933 to Vida Tucker (1906-1981) and Myron S. Goldman (1905-1936). She graduated from John Burroughs High School in St. Louis and earned an Associate of Arts degree from Centenary Junior College (New Jersey). Prince augmented her education at Fontbonne College, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Webster University. She married Ronald S. Prince (1931-2016) and the couple had three children.

Prince began her career with oral history in 1979 when she answered an advertisement for volunteers at the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center. She interviewed over 100 people in St. Louis touched by the holocaust. In 1986, Sister Prince began working with the Missouri Historical Society in several capacities. She taught programs in how to conduct oral history interviews, did research for exhibits, and conducted oral history projects relating to several museum exhibitions, most notably I, Too Sing America: Black St. Louisans in the 1940s, A Strong Seed Planted: The Civil Rights Movement in St. Louis, 1954-1968, and Golden Gateway: Asian Immigration to St. Louis.

In 1993, Prince embarked upon an independent oral history project in which she explored how race affected people of color in their daily lives in St. Louis. After consultations with staff at the Missouri Historical Society, she interviewed 40 people. She called the project “Race and Memory in St. Louis” and it became the basis of her book, That’s The Way It Was (MHS Library StL/305.8/G619t).

SCOPE AND CONTENTS
The collection dates from 1942 to 2014 and is arranged alphabetically into three series: Race and Memory Oral History Project series which is subdivided into the Interviews and Management subseries, Book series, and General Subject Files series. Interview transcriptions and supporting documentation for the “Race and Memory” oral history project conducted by Vida Sister Prince from 1993 to 1995 comprise the bulk of the collection. It also includes files about the management of the project; files about Prince’s book, That’s the Way It Was (The History Press, 2013), which resulted from the oral history project; and general subject files relating to Prince, black history, and prominent civil rights figures in St. Louis.

Sister Prince began this independent oral history project in 1993. The Missouri Historical Society offered limited support: advice and feedback, some transcribing, and a place to conduct interviews if needed. It was also understood that the tapes and transcripts would eventually be deposited with the Society’s Library and Research Center. In That’s The Way It Was, an article for Gateway Heritage (spring 1997), she described her project as:

"…an oral history project about how race affected people of color as they went about their daily lives. I wanted to know how people learned about themselves: how they became aware that there were people whose skin was a different color than their own, and that it made a difference, and where in the St. Louis landscape their memories took place.”

Sister Prince ultimately interviewed 40 people for her project, both African-American and Caucasian. Some interviews included relatives or spouses, but most were with a single individual. Interviewees ranged in age from thirty to over ninety.

See the finding aid: mohistory.org/collections/item/A3071

# data[].attributes.headline
Vida "Sister" Prince: Race and Memory in St. Louis

# data[].attributes.subject
Vida "Sister" Prince: Race and Memory in St. Louis

# data[].attributes.body
Vida “Sister” Prince began her oral history career in 1979 at the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center. As part of that project, she interviewed over 100 people in St. Louis. In 1986, she began working for the Missouri Historical Society on various projects including teaching others how to conduct oral history interviews, researching exhibits, and completing her own oral history projects. One of these projects is titled “Race and Memory in St. Louis”, and it became the foundation of her book “That’s The Way It Was”. As part of this project, she interviewed Black people who grow up in St. Louis on the city and what it was like throughout their lives. Starting in 1993, Prince interviewed 40 people exploring the question “how [did] race affected people of color in their daily lives in St. Louis?”.

We have accessed her interviews through the Missouri Historical Society and have linked many which highlight the experiences of residents in Mill Creek Valley throughout this project.

# data[].attributes.body
For those interested in more interviews of people in Mill Creek, the following episodes can provide a larger perspective:

-McKinney (boarding house resident, Mill Creek vs Other)
-Penny (move to Mill Creek)
-Weston (social worker, outside perspective?)

# data[].attributes.body
Recommended Sections: Where she grew up 1:20-5 & 47-50, Virginia trip/Jim Crow 5-11, Mill Creek/Segregation/Red Lining 41:15-47, Working and Race 56-58

Pearl McFarland Shank was born in St. Louis in 1926 and grew up in Mill Creek. She recalls moving to Mill Creek at age 5 and having 3 white families on the block. What she now recognizes as the beginning of white flight.

She recalls her brothers to the black theater (now an Irish Pub) by the Union Station to watch shows. They were friends with the white boys in the neighborhood and kept asking why they couldn’t go to the movies with their white friends. Shank states everyone in the neighborhood was nice. Her childhood is defined by experiencing the opportunities of the city. Shank and her brothers went to shows and attended classes at the Y.

Shank recalls a stark change as white flight began out of the city center. She also describes the affects of Red Lining on the city. She recalls the people calling the south side of the city “the ghetto”, as a child she thought the word meant a group of similar people living together. Shank recalls people using that term to describe the Italians in the south, but her neighborhood being a more central and nicer part of the city.

She remembers her family visiting the south and noticing a stark difference as they crossed the Mason-Dixon line. After that point of their trip, she learned what Jim Crow was. At each rest stop, bathroom, bus, restaurant, her mother would explain how that’s the way it was in the south.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interview with Pearl McFarland Shanks PART ONE, Vida "Sister" Prince Oral History Collection by Missouri Historical Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pearl McFarland Shanks (1926-2000): Interviewed on 30 March 1993, Fall 1994 (phone), 28 July 1995 (no transcript), 15 August 1995 -- Shanks was born in St. Louis and grew up in Mill Creek. She and her brothers belonged to the Drum and Bugle Corps of the Tom Powell Post No. 77 of the American Legion. She recalled segregation in the departments stores, public transportation, and the Shapleigh Hardware Company. Shanks experienced Jim Crow policies on a visit to Virginia, compared that experience to St. Louis. She also explained feelings in the black community about those who could pass as white.


Vida “Sister” Prince was born in 1933 to Vida Tucker (1906-1981) and Myron S. Goldman (1905-1936). She graduated from John Burroughs High School in St. Louis and earned an Associate of Arts degree from Centenary Junior College (New Jersey). Prince augmented her education at Fontbonne College, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Webster University. She married Ronald S. Prince (1931-2016) and the couple had three children.

Prince began her career with oral history in 1979 when she answered an advertisement for volunteers at the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center. She interviewed over 100 people in St. Louis touched by the holocaust. In 1986, Sister Prince began working with the Missouri Historical Society in several capacities. She taught programs in how to conduct oral history interviews, did research for exhibits, and conducted oral history projects relating to several museum exhibitions, most notably I, Too Sing America: Black St. Louisans in the 1940s, A Strong Seed Planted: The Civil Rights Movement in St. Louis, 1954-1968, and Golden Gateway: Asian Immigration to St. Louis.

In 1993, Prince embarked upon an independent oral history project in which she explored how race affected people of color in their daily lives in St. Louis. After consultations with staff at the Missouri Historical Society, she interviewed 40 people. She called the project “Race and Memory in St. Louis” and it became the basis of her book, That’s The Way It Was (MHS Library StL/305.8/G619t).

SCOPE AND CONTENTS
The collection dates from 1942 to 2014 and is arranged alphabetically into three series: Race and Memory Oral History Project series which is subdivided into the Interviews and Management subseries, Book series, and General Subject Files series. Interview transcriptions and supporting documentation for the “Race and Memory” oral history project conducted by Vida Sister Prince from 1993 to 1995 comprise the bulk of the collection. It also includes files about the management of the project; files about Prince’s book, That’s the Way It Was (The History Press, 2013), which resulted from the oral history project; and general subject files relating to Prince, black history, and prominent civil rights figures in St. Louis.

Sister Prince began this independent oral history project in 1993. The Missouri Historical Society offered limited support: advice and feedback, some transcribing, and a place to conduct interviews if needed. It was also understood that the tapes and transcripts would eventually be deposited with the Society’s Library and Research Center. In That’s The Way It Was, an article for Gateway Heritage (spring 1997), she described her project as:

"…an oral history project about how race affected people of color as they went about their daily lives. I wanted to know how people learned about themselves: how they became aware that there were people whose skin was a different color than their own, and that it made a difference, and where in the St. Louis landscape their memories took place.”

Sister Prince ultimately interviewed 40 people for her project, both African-American and Caucasian. Some interviews included relatives or spouses, but most were with a single individual. Interviewees ranged in age from thirty to over ninety.

See the finding aid: mohistory.org/collections/item/A3071

# data[].attributes.headline
What did residents think of Mill Creek before reconstruction?

# data[].attributes.subject
What did residents think of Mill Creek before reconstruction?

# data[].attributes.body
While Mill Creek was often described as "blighted" by non-residents, many people who grew up there remember their space fondly. Many residents describe the people and community as a fundamental part of their upbringing. They remember going to school, relationships with neighbors, and a sense of separation from some of the racial tensions in other parts of the city.

# data[].attributes.body
Recommended  Sections: 0-13:30, timeline of development in St. Louis and nationally 14:45-19:30, Outcome of the area (race) 21:10-26:20

Isadore Millstone was a resident of St. Louis. He was the head of Millstone Construction which built the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project. He provides a prospective of someone both invested in Mill Creek and someone from outside the community.

He says that as part of the federal program he built projects in St. Louis and other cities. Housing units were destroyed to expand the urban area with highways, but he states this is the result not the intention of the project. He describes how the Black community was less able to move into single-family homes. His company built rental units.  The St. Louis housing authority managed who was able to move into the units. These units, both family and single bedroom (for the elderly), were limited to people making below a certain income.  He describes the process, well analyzed by historians and social justice minded individuals, of the different outcomes of people who were able to own homes vs renters. Millstone describes how rental properties were less maintained, he states there was a lack of pride and intention from the occupants of rentals compared to homeowners. People who owned homes were able to gain wealth as property and home value increased.

He describes how this process in St. Louis and Mill Creek was far from unique and rather happened all over the United States as part of the same process. He says no place did any better St. Louis at managing the urban renewal of black neighborhoods.

He stated that the residents of Mill Creek feel positively about the Mill Creek area because of nostalgia, not because of the state of area. For further description of this is his follow-up interview until the 2:20 minute mark: https://on.soundcloud.com/7CGfv

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interview with Isadore Millstone PART ONE, Vida "Sister" Prince Oral History Collection by Missouri Historical Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Isadore Millstone (1907-2009): Interviewed on 6 and 7 September 1994 -- Millstone grew up in St. Louis, was a well-known philanthropist, and headed Millstone Constructions when it built the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project. He recalled what neighborhoods looked like when he was young, where different ethnic groups lived, and what Mill Creek was like before it was developed.


Vida “Sister” Prince was born in 1933 to Vida Tucker (1906-1981) and Myron S. Goldman (1905-1936). She graduated from John Burroughs High School in St. Louis and earned an Associate of Arts degree from Centenary Junior College (New Jersey). Prince augmented her education at Fontbonne College, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Webster University. She married Ronald S. Prince (1931-2016) and the couple had three children.

Prince began her career with oral history in 1979 when she answered an advertisement for volunteers at the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center. She interviewed over 100 people in St. Louis touched by the holocaust. In 1986, Sister Prince began working with the Missouri Historical Society in several capacities. She taught programs in how to conduct oral history interviews, did research for exhibits, and conducted oral history projects relating to several museum exhibitions, most notably I, Too Sing America: Black St. Louisans in the 1940s, A Strong Seed Planted: The Civil Rights Movement in St. Louis, 1954-1968, and Golden Gateway: Asian Immigration to St. Louis.

In 1993, Prince embarked upon an independent oral history project in which she explored how race affected people of color in their daily lives in St. Louis. After consultations with staff at the Missouri Historical Society, she interviewed 40 people. She called the project “Race and Memory in St. Louis” and it became the basis of her book, That’s The Way It Was (MHS Library StL/305.8/G619t).

SCOPE AND CONTENTS
The collection dates from 1942 to 2014 and is arranged alphabetically into three series: Race and Memory Oral History Project series which is subdivided into the Interviews and Management subseries, Book series, and General Subject Files series. Interview transcriptions and supporting documentation for the “Race and Memory” oral history project conducted by Vida Sister Prince from 1993 to 1995 comprise the bulk of the collection. It also includes files about the management of the project; files about Prince’s book, That’s the Way It Was (The History Press, 2013), which resulted from the oral history project; and general subject files relating to Prince, black history, and prominent civil rights figures in St. Louis.

Sister Prince began this independent oral history project in 1993. The Missouri Historical Society offered limited support: advice and feedback, some transcribing, and a place to conduct interviews if needed. It was also understood that the tapes and transcripts would eventually be deposited with the Society’s Library and Research Center. In That’s The Way It Was, an article for Gateway Heritage (spring 1997), she described her project as:

"…an oral history project about how race affected people of color as they went about their daily lives. I wanted to know how people learned about themselves: how they became aware that there were people whose skin was a different color than their own, and that it made a difference, and where in the St. Louis landscape their memories took place.”

Sister Prince ultimately interviewed 40 people for her project, both African-American and Caucasian. Some interviews included relatives or spouses, but most were with a single individual. Interviewees ranged in age from thirty to over ninety.

See the finding aid: mohistory.org/collections/item/A3071

# data[].attributes.body
After the urban renewal project was complete, many highways, businesses, and buildings were built to improve the look of the city

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/archive/1947-comprehensive-plan/