1949: Pruitt-Igoe, Bertha Gilkey, and Public Housing Projects

1900-1999: A New Divide
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

African American activists such as Bertha Gilkey, continued to draw attention to the horrible living conditions of many in Black public housing — an ongoing condition of redlining and racist housing policies that continued to segregate American cities.

What’s important to know?

  1. “Urban Blight”: Urban blight was a term used by city leaders to justify taking over Black neighborhoods that the city had neglected. They would push the community into a less desirable area and then develop the seized land to make money for the city.

  2. Pruitt-Igoe: City governments started investing in big public housing projects, especially after the federal government offered funds. The Pruitt-Igoe complex in St. Louis symbolized both the hopes of the public housing movement and the ongoing racism related to these projects.

  3. Cochran Gardens & Bertha Gilkey: Bertha Gilkey lived in Cochran Gardens, a public housing project. She actively spoke up for the rights of residents and fought the city for better care and lower rent.

1: “Urban Blight”

To address so-called “urban blight” within the United States, the federal government, in coordination with states and cities, passed the Housing Act of 1949. This act was the first in a series of acts that were intended to help transition the United States from a war economy to a post-war economy (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 57).

Part of this transition involved developing city centers to become places of commerce and interest. As developers surveyed the land, they often found that areas inhabited by Black communities were needed to enact their ideal recreation of the city. In essence, areas that the government had forced Black communities to inhabit that had sub-par infrastructure and where the Federal Government declined to provide housing loans were then declared “blight” by the same government and seized from the Black community in the name of redevelopment and the post-war economy.

Thompson Fullilove (2016) found that “once those [i.e., blighted] areas had been defined, the city had the task of developing a ‘workable plan’… once the plan was approved, the designated areas could be seized by using the government’s power of eminent domain” (p. 58). After the land was seized and its occupants—mostly African Americans—displaced, the cities then partnered with developers to build “businesses, educational and cultural institutions, and residences for middle- and upper-income white people” (p. 59).

2: Pruitt-Igoe

The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments complex in St. Louis.

Image Source: Wikipedia

High-rise public housing was built in cases where the land could not be used for profit. In St. Louis, one of the most high profile examples of this type of public housing was the Pruitt-Igoe complex. The complex comprised 33 buildings and housed thousands of people. At one time, seen as a leading example of public housing projects as they were allowed to fall into disrepair, the optimism surrounding it’s future disappeared.

One of a few St. Louis public housing projects funded by the Housing Act of 1949, it eventually “became part of a citywide rent strike and a center of Black Nationalist organizing just years before its demolition was begun in 1972” (Izzo & Looker, 2022, p. 38).

Listen

Listen to oral histories recorded with residents of Pruitt-Igoe. This oral history project is part of a larger project at Washington University in St. Louis that focuses on public reparative memory work (for more information on the projects we work on in the Studiolab, visit us here:  https://www.m4f.community/ ).

3: Cochran Gardens & Bertha Gilkey

Bertha Gilkey

Image Source: Wikipedia

Bertha Gilkey—one of fifteen children—was raised by her mother in Cochran Gardens, St. Louis. The Cochran Gardens were the first high-rise housing project funded by the Housing Act of 1949 and completed in 1953. Originally the units were intended for lower income White families. However, in 1956 they were desegregated and that was when Emma Gilkey, Bertha’s mother, moved in (Lanker, 1999, 22). Bertha Gilkey noted of Cochran Gardens,

“When Cochran was all white, they didn't refer to it as a project. It was called Cochran Gardens. As Cochran became more and more black, I began to see the services reduced. Once it became all black, there was no standards. It moved from being a neighborhood to a project. It became a dumping ground” (Lanker, 1999, 22).

Cochran Gardens

Image Source: Built St. Louis

Observing this obvious double-standard, Gilkey led a group of tenants from Cochrain, Pruitt-Igoe and other housing projects on a six month rent strike seeking to draw attention to the deplorable living conditions within these places. The strike forced the city to replace its housing authority board and six years later, after her relentless advocacy, they finally allowed an independent management company to take over management of Cochran Gardens. Under private management and GIlkey’s fundraising prowess and skills, Cochran Gardens was turned around (although it was still demolished in 2008). (Lanker, 1999)

In 2002, she entered a guilty plea for embezzling U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds. She was placed on probation and ordered to pay $19,000. Despite this incident, at her death the outpouring of gratitude for the work she had done to advocate for Black people in public housing was significant. "She is legendary as far as being an advocate for tenant rights and public housing," said St. Louis Alderman Jeffrey Boyd (Hollinshead, 2014).

Your Turn

How did housing acts and city housing regulations continue to deprive African Americans of economic resources and help them build generational wealth?

    • Explore: Mapping Decline - St. Louis and the American City

    • Read: Lee, P. H. (2017). Shattering 'Blight' and the Hidden Narratives that Condemn. Seton Hall Legislative Journal: Vol. 42, Iss. 1, Article 2.

    • Read: Heathcott, J. (2024). The Housing Act of 1949 in Images. Journal of the American Planning Association, 90(4), 786–790. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2024.2386914

    • Read: Appler, D. (2023). The Many Geographies of Urban Renewal: New Perspectives on the Housing Act of 1949. Temple University Press.

    • Read: Checkoway, B. (1985). "Revitalizing an Urban Neighborhood: A St. Louis Case Study'". The Metropolitan Midwest. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press

  • General Resources:

    Books & Articles:

    Archives:

    Museums & Parks:

    • Cashin, S. (2021). White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. Penguin Random House.

    • Tighe, J. Rosie and Ganning, Joanna, The Divergent City: Unequal and Uneven Development in St. Louis (March 18, 2015). Urban Geography, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2580328

    • Wilson, W. J. (2012). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, Second Edition. The University of Chicago Press.

    • ——-. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2009.

Stephanie Brizee
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1948: Segregation in St. Louis and the Black Families Who Challenged It
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1954: Oliver Brown and the Education of Black Children