History of segregation in St. Louis
In 1916, during the Jim Crow Era, St. Louis passed a residential segregation ordinance. This ordinance stated that if 75% of the residents of a neighborhood were of a certain race, no one from a different race was allowed to move into the neighborhood.Smith, Jeffrey. “A Preservation Plan for St. Louis Part I: Historic Contexts” St. Louis, Missouri Cultural Resources Office. Web. Retrieved November 13, 2014. This ordinance did not stand as it was challenged in court by the NAACP. In response, racial covenants on housing were introduced. These prevented the sale of houses in certain neighborhoods to "persons not of Caucasian race". The racial covenants were ruled to be unconstitutional in 1948 when they were overturned in the ''Statistics and studies
As estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 the populations separated by Delmar Blvd. were as follows.U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2012-2016, 5-year estimates. The Delmar Divide illustrates segregation issues in St. Louis more broadly. Segregation in St. Louis, Missouri has been the subject of many studies. A Manhattan Institute study entitled “The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America's Neighborhoods, 1890-2010” studied segregation in U.S. cities with the largest population of black residents. The study ranked each city by aGentrification along the Delmar Divide
Starting in the early 1900s, St. Louis was one of few cities that actively pushed for legalizing local zoning. In ''Mapping Decline'', author Colin Gordon notes that the fear of a "negro invasion", orchestrated by local realtors, led to the formation of a “new organization...that called for racial zoning, provoked practices of school segregation, and overall advocated for 'mutual restriction' between the two primary races".Gordon, Colin. '' ww.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zw7k2 Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City'. University of Pennsylvania Press. JSTOR. 2008. This lay the foundation that has impacted St. Louis ever since. In the 1970s, rapid urban renewal expanded upon the underlying foundation of gentrification. According to Gordon, the short-term focus of this renewal was "attracting high-income residents back downtown and eradicating the 'worst slums'" of the city, the majority of which were in the northern parts of the city. These efforts of urbanization ultimately failed, however, and left the regions “ blighted” and considered by earlier advocates of development to be :an economic liability". Gordon goes on to mention that many of such developmental failures lie primarily in the northern section of St. Louis, one cause of the divide along the northern and southern regions of Delmar. By the late 1990s, the leading minority loan-lender banks in the city, Boatmen's, was in danger of dismantling. In 1993, as part of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Boatmen's Bank announce it would provide $284million per year to all borrowers in all communities.Feldman, Brian S. Redlining from Afar: How Consolidation Killed Off St. Louis’s Exemplary Minority lender.(Boatmen’s Bank). Vol. 48, no. 3-5, Washington Monthly Company, Mar. 2016. In the following years, Boatmen's received consecutive awards for its service to minorities in St. Louis. But, after acquiring Boatmen's in 1996, NationsBank dismantled the many minority-lending programs, which largely remain unavailable, particularly in the region north of Delmar. As Ian Trivers finds, "despite the prime location and low cost housing...the neighborhoods directly north of the prosperous CWE he Central West End, south of the Delmar Divide">Central_West_End.html" ;"title="he Central West End">he Central West End, south of the Delmar Dividehave experienced almost no redevelopment and repopulation spillover".Trivers, Ian, and Rosenthal, Joanna. "A Picture Is Worth 930 Words: The Delmar Divide". ''Focus on Geography''. Vol. 58, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 199–200. doi:10.1111/foge.12065. Trivers goes on to say that neighborhoods north of Delmar are still recovering from the brunt past; physical violence increased and "vacant buildings" and "empty lots are common sights" on the north side of Delmar.Income-Level Disparity Along the Divide
A 2014 joint report issued by Washington University in St. Louis and St. Louis University, titled “Segregation in St. Louis,” investigates the wealth gap between black and white families along the Delmar Divide. The report notes the “average African-American family takes 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth as the average white family”. Additionally, the same study reports that the wealth return generated by education between Black and White families differ by as much as $50,000. In “Black Lives and Policing: The Larger Context of Ghettoization,” author John Logan depicts that while poverty in the suburbs of St. Louis is “below 12%,” Ferguson “tracts in the range of 20-25% poor” with some even above “35% poor”. In “What Do We Mean When We Say, ‘Structural Racism,’” author Walter Johnson writes that “federal housing assistance” in the city are often placed under a “segregated housing market,” ultimately causing many blacks to be illegally excluded. As J. Rosie Tighe states in “The Divergent City: Unequal and Uneven Development in St. Louis,” the region's clear divide along the Delmar into the north and south means that “lower income households and people of color … are disproportionately concentrated … and suffer disproportionality from the resulting misdistribution”.Tighe, J. Rosie, and Ganning, Joanna P. “The Divergent City: Unequal and Uneven Development in St. Louis.” Urban Geography, vol. 36, no. 5, Routledge, Apr. 2015, pp. 1–20, doi:10.1080/02723638.2015.1014673.Difference in Education Levels
According to the article “Segregation in St. Louis,” resources available for education are very scarce along the northern part of Delmar Boulevard. Specifically, lack of resources to schools in this area not only hinders the academic success of students but also leads to an overall “disconnection from the economic mainstream”. Moreover, funding comes primarily from the residents within the specified school district, and since the majority of the families living north of Delmar “have limited resources, … adequate developmental support” for schools in this region of the city becomes more and more challenging, therefore widening the gap.References
{{reflist, 2 Anti-black racism in the United States Geography of St. Louis History of St. Louis