During the Depression and World War II (WWII), African Americans in St. Louis continued to struggle.

To help Black residents, some community organizations rallied for equal rights and equal pay. These organizations included the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the March on Washington Movement, as well as local labor unions, such as, Local 688 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Lang, 2009, p. 14). Together, these organizations made progress against segregation in some areas of workers’ rights, housing, and education. 

The advent of WWII changed St. Louis drastically and caused a commercial boom that increased housing and labor demand in all sectors of the city.

Lang (2009) wrote that “World War II had also transformed Saint Louis’s economy. The area was becoming fertile ground for emerging industries in electronics, chemicals, aerospace defense, and research and development, particularly as the nation veered toward greater military spending.” (p. 75).

African American men and women were hired to help in the war effort. However, they often faced challenges such as being hired for menial jobs or hired into racially segregated units.

With the influx of African American workers came an increased need for housing. St. Louis had few houses to spare for Black people.

Despite the expansion of some public housing established to support the massive influx of Black people contributing to the war effort, Black people were limited to densely populated neighborhoods like Carr Square Village (Lang, 2009, p. 73).

An example of the segregated housing in St. Louis during and after WWII is the community of “West End near Forest Park” (Lang, 2009, p. 71). West End contrasted sharply with the areas where “Many poor white workers [lived] … [those] who had migrated during the war for defense work lived along the north [Mississippi] river front, and overall the city was still a cluster of working-class enclaves” (p. 71).

West End and the riverfront communities contrasted even more with “Mill Creek Valley, a center of black working-class settlement, [which] continued to occupy the shadows of the Central Corridor skyscrapers and warehouses” (Lang, 2009, p. 71).

Lang noted that the neighborhood of “Ville had also become an increasingly crowded Black district. Circumscribed by the city’s long history of restricted housing covenants, community residents had also been thwarted in attempts to expand the array of social opportunities available within its segregated boundaries” (p. 71). Yet “between 1940 and 1950, 38,000 migrants came, expanding the number of African Americans to 153,766, or 18 percent, of the city’s populace” (Lang, 2009, p. 72).

Whether it be the community of West End, Mill Creek Valley, or The Ville, Black families were forced to live in overcrowded and under resourced areas of the city.

The social-economic disparities between white and Black neighborhoods is exemplified by the inconsistent support of public education in St. Louis City.

As the Black population increased and required more schools, white residents balked at increasing educational opportunities for Black residents. Lang wrote that

In 1944, when they had sought to convert the Core Brilliante Junior High School into a black schoolhouse, Ville residents had encountered resistance from a group of more than seven hundred white homeowners. Located in a densely populated black area, the school had only been partially used by its five hundred white students, while more than a thousand black children in the school district had suffered overcrowding. (p. 71)

Despite this segregation and systemic racism, large numbers of African Americans also enlisted in the armed services to defend the nation that continued to deny them equal rights and equal participation in American life.