While the 1876 decision for St. Louis City to split off from the county may have initially made sense for the city’s interests, in the twentieth century it became a means for racial segregation.

As the metropolitan area expanded and pressed against the western county borders and the eastern border with Illinois the urban and suburban growth occurred outside the regulatory oversight of the city (p. 23). Colin Gordan explains why this created a particular problem for St. Louis:

Because the city could not expand, new residential developments to the west fell under other jurisdictions or created their own. The central planning goal of these private developments and new municipalities, in turn, was to insulate themselves from local costs or threats or burdens–especially industrial land use, multifamily housing, and African American occupancy. The damage here was done not by the divorce of 1876 but by the offspring of that divorce: the extension of home rule to a hundred odd municipal fragments that were–in purpose and practice–predatory, insular, and deeply discriminatory. (Gordon, 2019, p. 23).

The concept of “home rule” enabled many municipalities in St. Louis County to restrict who could live there.

St. Louis County held six municipalities in 1900, eighteen municipalities by 1930, over thirty-six municipalities in 1940, and then over seventy-two separate municipalities by 1950 (Gordon, 2019, p. 23). The expansion and creation of these “one hundred odd municipal fragments,” as Gordan describes, were as effective in the St. Louis region as race-restrictive deed covenants at effecting the work of sustaining racial segregation (p. 50-51). 

The division between City and County further isolated Black communities and kept them from receiving access to basic services.

The suburban development in the St. Louis region created sharp jurisdictional dividing lines between city and county, and “on each side of [these lines], the provision of basic services–schools, policing, fire protection, garbage collection–stopped and started at county or municipal borders” (p. 51). As such, the patchwork of “insular corporate units that are uneven in size, capacity, and composition” led to a calcification of economic and racial segregation–concentrating access to resources in some municipalities while starving them in others (pgs. 21-22). Even as the waves of white flight that occurred throughout the century continued and some of these municipalities (such as those in North St. Louis, like the city of Ferguson) shifted from predominantly white to Black in residential composition, “the consequences of segregation–including concentrated poverty, limited economic opportunity, a paucity of public services (except heavy policing), and political disenfranchisement–moved to these ‘secondhand suburbs’” alongside the changing demographics (p. 9).  

The fragmentation and growth of these different municipalities–and their expansion over the unincorporated areas of St. Louis County–effectively excluded African Americans and restricted development of any multifamily housing.

While there were several enclaves of African American residents who had previously settled in unincorporated county land, such as in Elmwood Park and Meacham Park, throughout the first half of the twentieth century these pre-existing enclaves of predominantly Black residents found themselves via “development” plans and strategic zoning practices physically circumscribed (Gordon, 2019, pgs. 37-46). Boundaries such as railroads and motorways, or newer (white) neighborhoods with race restrictive covenants spread out across the county surrounding and abutting these original Black neighborhoods, in effect restricting any possibility for expansion and creating miniature ghettoes.

Additionally, in the first half of the century, neighborhoods and small African American enclaves such as these were absorbed into larger incorporated communities within the county. While that absorption on its face might appear as a way to extend municipal services, it rarely meant greater support or resources for those Black residents; the absorption of these Black neighborhoods also strategically diluted the Black vote.

These municipal fragments reveal a narrative of expansion and a narrative of systematic exclusion and segregation.

This fragmentation and siloing of St. Louis County attempted and was successful at keeping resources, wealth, and services out of the hands of black St. Louis residents, while also ensuring that these residents would remain segregated in poorer, less desirable neighborhoods.

To read more about the impact of this segregation, see “For the Sake of All,” a 2014 report on St. Louis and its surrounding areas.