1948: Segregation in St. Louis and the Black Families Who Challenged It

1900-1999: A New Divide
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

Redlining, blockbusting, and White flight hindered Black economic growth through home ownership. In response, Black families sued to uphold their rights to live where they wanted.

What’s important to know?

  1. Blockbusting & White Flight: Blockbusting was a tactic used by White real estate speculators to drive out White home owners (encouraging White flight) and then deceptively “selling” homes to Black families that often led to these families being evicted from their homes.

  2. Economic Slump: The post World War II economic contraction hit the African American communities within St. Louis more deeply than it did others furthering their economic struggles.

  3. Challenges in Court: A number of Black and multi-racial families challenged segregated housing ordinances and won.

1: Blockbusting & White Flight

Pamphlet demonstrating the tactics used during blockbusting. The text of the pamphlet reads: “Look at these homes now! An entire block ruined by Negro invasion. Every house marked “x” now occupied by negroes. Actual photograph of 4300 West Belle Place. Save your home! Vote for segregation!”

Source: “The Making of Ferguson,” Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center.

As “urban blight” was being used to claim desirable real estate in the city from African American residents, real estate speculators were increasing their use of a prejudice-driven tactic called “blockbusting.” Blockbusting was used to clear entire neighborhoods once populated by middle- or upper-class whites so that the homes could then be sold or rented at large profits to African Americans who had few choices for home ownership.

At its most basic level, blockbusting was the process of scaring white people out of neighborhoods (which precipitated “white flight”) so corrupt investors could buy their houses at a reduced price and then sell or rent those same houses to African Americans at a huge profit. As White families left to be replaced with poorer Black families, the tax base of the city collapsed, leaving urban areas depressed and African Americans with fewer supports from the city government (Orser, 1994, p. 4). 

Historian Edward Orser (1994) described blockbusting as  

The intentional action of real estate speculators to place an African American resident in a house on a previously all-white block for the express purpose of panicking the whites into selling for the profit to be gained by buying low and selling high. Blockbusting stepped into the artificial void created by the dual housing market [where whites could buy wherever they wanted but blacks could not], relying upon African American housing needs and white racial fears to manipulate the process of racial change for their own ends (p. 84-85).

Once white owners sold their houses to speculators at a loss, African Americans were then duped into contract or lease-option housing schemes that prevented them from owning the homes they thought they were buying. Home contracts did not require down payments or closing costs from buyers. These terms were initially attractive to African Americans with little or no credit and who were considered by lenders as “high-risk” because of their race and lower income. But, unknown to the buyers, these housing contracts were not real mortgages (Orser, 1994, p. 91). The person who listed the home sale—a real estate speculator—held the home title and maintained the mortgage with a bank or lender.

Within these complex home “contracts,” small-print terms allowed the speculators to raise rent or terminate contracts at any point for almost any reason, which happened frequently. Some of these contracts were even verbal agreements, and therefore even easier to dissolve. Once the speculator declared the contract null and void, the family would have to vacate the home. Then the process would start all over again with another unsuspecting “buyer” eager to escape old and neglected neighborhoods (Orser, 1994, p. 91). Rothstein (2017) notes that it was “[t]he FHS’s redlining [that] necessitated the contract sale system for black home owners unable to obtain conventional mortgages, and this created the conditions for neighborhood deterioration” (p. 97). There were many neighborhoods in St. Louis that collapsed into a cycle of poverty due to blockbusting and contract housing. 

2: Economic Slump

The post-World War II industrial contraction experienced across the U.S. impacted St. Louis considerably and exacerbated the neighborhood deterioration caused by redlining, blockbusting, and White flight.

This economic slump hit the Black community especially hard. Lang (2004) found that “By the mid-1950s, St. Louis had suffered the loss of more than eleven thousand industrial jobs, due in large part to the westward suburban growth and capital flight to the outlying St. Louis County” (p. 104).

3: Challenges in Court

African Americans continued to highlight the double standard to which citizens of the United States were held based on race. Having returned home from World War II, they continued their fight for victory at home.

Buchanan v. Warley (1917)

Charles H. Buchanan (White) agreed to sell his home to William Warley (Black) in Louisville, Kentucky, Warley. When Warley sent in his offer, he expressly noted that he was purchasing the home in order to make it his primary residence and that if he could not reside in said home that he would not conclude the agreement. When he did not conclude the agreement because of Louisville’s ordinance not allowing Black individuals to live in predominantly White neighborhoods (which this was). Buchanan sued arguing that the ordinance was unconstitutional and that Warley should be allowed to live in the house and Buchanan receive the full payment for the house.

The case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled in Buchanan’s favor arguing that “The effect of the ordinance under consideration was not merely to regulate a business or the like, but was to destroy the right of the individual to acquire, enjoy, and dispose of his property. Being of this character, it was void as being opposed to the due process clause of the constitution” (Buchanan v. Warley, 1917, 245 U.S. 80). While the court did not rule for the rights of Mr. Warley as a Black man to live in the house, the outcome was the same and helped establish a precedent for such cases.

Shelley v. Kraemer (1945)

The Shelley’s Home in St. Louis, Missouri (2008), now a national landmark

Image Source: WIkipedia

In 1945, J.D. and Ethel Shelley, a Black couple, moved into a neighborhood on the outskirts of the segregated area of The Ville. They had moved from Mississippi 15 years earlier fleeing the threat of lynching and racial violence. After renting for many years, they sought to purchase a home at 4600 Labadie Avenue in St. Louis.

The property they purchased was in a community that had a racially restrictive covenant in place (as was the case with 85% of White St. Louis neighborhoods). A White couple on the street, Louis and Fern Kraemer, sued the Shelley’s arguing they were not allowed to purchase or live in the neighborhood (Oliveri, 2015, p. 1057).

Not surprisingly, the Missouri Supreme Court sided with the Kraemer’s, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to “a state action exclusively” (p. 1057). The Shelley’s appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled in their favor - but on a rather technical argument. The Supreme Court did not rule racial restrictive covenants as violating the Fourteenth Amendment. They only ruled that a State could not enforce the covenant because, as legal scholar Roger Oliveri explained it, “the coercive power of the courts to enforce the covenant was clearly state action, and thus subject to the Fourteenth Amendment” (p. 1058). The Shelley’s case advanced the rights of Black homeownership as it made restrictive covenants unenforceable legally.

Jones v. Mayer (1968)

Joseph and Barbara Jones, plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Jones v. Mayer

Image Source: Civil Rights

In 1965, Joseph and Barbara Jones (a mixed race couple) put down an offer on a home in the predominantly White suburb of Paddock Woods in North St. Louis. Alfred H. Mayer, the developer responsible for creating the subdivision and selling the homes, refused to sell to them because Mr. Jones was Black.

The Jones’ sued and eventually their case was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Until this point, the courts had ruled narrowly on the issue of whether a State could enforce a racial segregation code. This case challenged the court to apply the Fourteenth Amendment to private, individual business relationships.

In a significant win for the Jones’ and for Black Americans, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. For the first time since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, the court ruled that amendment did indeed cover private conduct.

Shortly after this Congress passed the 1965 Fair Housing Act, which also provided the same protections outlined in the court ruling (p. 1061).

“We hold that § 1982 bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of property, and that the statute, thus construed, is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment.”
— Justice Potter Stewart in the Majority Opinion for Jones v. Mayer

Community Members

George L. Vaughn

Image Source: ArchCity Defenders

Did you know? Attorney George Vaughn was a successful lawyer and political organizer in St. Louis. The son of enslaved persons, he rose to prominence in the city helping to organize and support the election of the Black officials.

Vaughn also served as legal council in the Shelley v. Kraemer case defending the right of the Shelley’s to purchase their home by relying on the Fourteenth Amendments equal rights clause. He described the restrictive covenants that denied Black access to specific neighborhoods “‘the Achilles heel’ of U.S. democracy” (Ruffin II, H. G., 2007).

Your Turn

What was the impact of the Supreme Court cases challenging race-based covenants? What is the ongoing impact of redlining today? How should this knowledge inform our approach to thinking about “redevelopment” and other inner city projects?

    • To read more about William Worley, see: Wigginton, Russell (October 2002). ""But he did what he could" William Warley leads Louisville's Fight for Justice, 1902-1946" (PDF). The Filson History Quarterly: 427–458.

    • Read the National Park Service designation form placing the Shelley house on the national register of historic places.

    • Explore “The Lines that Shape Our Cities: Connecting present-day environmental inequalities to redlining policies of the 1930s.” A project of the Washington University in St. Louis.

    • Books:

      • Daniel, P. (2013). Dispossession:Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. University of North Carolina Press.

      • Mulder, M. T. (2015). Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. Rutgers University Press.

      • Woldoff, R. A. (2011). White Flight/Black Flight: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhood. Cornell University Press.

      • Rothstein, R. (2018). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Norton Press.

      • Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. Denton. (1998). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Harvard University Press.

    • Lesson plans from Learning for Justice: “The Color of Law: Creating Racially Segregated Communities.” (Grades 9-12).

    • Teaching resources from Civil Rights Teachingon”Teaching Segregation and Inequality in Housing and Education.”

    • Lessons from Race: The Power of an Illusion: “Just an Environment or a Just Environment? Racial Segregation and Its Impacts.”

  • General Resources:

    Books & Articles:

    Archives:

    Museums & State Parks:

    • Brown, L. T. (2022). The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.

    • Connelly, N. D. B. (2014). A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. University of Chicago Press.

    • Moore, N. Y. (2019). South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. Picador Paper.

    • Taylor, K-Y. (2019). Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. University of North Carolina Press.

Stephanie Brizee
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