- I'm Jim Kirchherr, and
Living Saint Louis's "Summer of the 20th Century" now
brings us to the 1960s. When we first aired
"Decades" 20 years ago, a lot of the memories and
even many of the wounds were still pretty fresh. This time on "Decades," Saint Louis remakes its image
and its downtown in the 1960s. And in the neighborhoods
more changes. For some, there's the
problem of growth, for others, the
threat of decline, and for another, the hope of creating something
altogether new. (upbeat jazz music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Decades
was a co-production of the Missouri History
Museum and the Nine Network of Public Media. - The 1960s are often remembered
for cultural, political, and social upheaval, for riots,
assassinations, protests, but you can't talk about
Sain Louis in the 1960s without also talking
about baseball, about The Arch, about
the remaking of downtown. But that public face
did, in fact, mask some pretty serious
social issues. (upbeat music) (machinery rumbles) Saint Louis entered
the new decade, not just with big
talk and big plans, but with a big
construction site. A hole was being dug on the
riverfront 60 feet down, and the first concrete
would be poured to support a massive monument, an arch, symbolic of
the city's historic role as the Gateway to the West. The project was a source
of great pride for many even at this early stage, but others saw a
pork barrel project that might not do much
more than just sit there. This was an aging industrial
city with serious problems. Business, shopping,
jobs, factories, and middle class residents
were leaving the city, and Saint Louis was
building an arch. - In fact, I think there
were a lot of skeptics about the arch and a lot of critics about the
fact that they had selected that solution for what was
happening down there. Now if the arch had not
been such a singular success as a symbol and for everything, as
you know and living here, it has meant, if it hadn't had been that
singular success in that way, I still today, you would
think of it one of the great mistakes Saint Louis ever made, because you tore down the
history of the city, leveled it. - [Jim] Saint Louis had
first cleared the site back in the depression,
tearing down block after block of old 19th century
buildings left from the bygone
era of steamboats. The old riverfront
seemed at the time to have no future
in a modern city, and Eero Saarinen's arch
design, selected in 1948, was a bold statement
of modernism. In 1960, the tallest
buildings downtown were the civil courts and
Southwestern Bell Buildings, constructed during the
boom years of the 1920s away from the river on the
Western edge of downtown. The riverfront arch would
dominate the new look of Saint Louis, and it would
initiate a building boom that would last for many years. - The building of the
arch was an exciting time, and we were the bankers
for the contractors. And to see it go up
was really exciting. Well that was just
a tremendous bonus for the city of Saint Louis. And it brought a whole new
momentum to our community that we hadn't had. Downtown Saint Louis
was kinda dead. - [Jim] And The Arch really
did bring it back to life. Once the federal money
had been approved and the work started, other ideas followed, and soon
the new architects' models of the downtown began
to show not just an arch but a stadium, parking
garages, a new hotel, taking the place of a
rundown and seedy part of downtown Saint Louis. - Well we had the enthusiastic
leadership of Gussie Busch who owned, had just
bought the cardinals, wanted a new stadium,
wanted to bring it downtown, and so they redeveloped that
area and built the stadium. The stadium was built
by private money. That's very unusual
as you know today. - [Jim] Other projects would
follow in the '60s and '70s, new buildings and
corporate skyscrapers, but the arch came first. A monument to the city's past
and a symbol of its future, it did not escape the
realities of the present, the conflicts and the
politics of the 1960s. Civil rights activists
were protesting while it was being built, calling for the
construction companies to hire more black workers. The civil rights movement
had one important victory since World War II, and the issue now in
Saint Louis was jobs, and the companies that
would not hire blacks were anything but
menial work, if that. (crowd cheers) In August of 1963, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. held his March on Washington. He delivered the "I
Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln memorial. But many Saint Louis
civil rights activists missed this historic moment. They had stayed home to
make their own history at Jefferson Bank. (protesters clap and sing) - It was the first
time that we had had a major confrontation between the power
structure, the in group, the business community, and just the average
African American. - [Jim] CORE, the Committee
of Racial Equality began to pick at
the Jefferson Bank, because it would
not meet the demand to hire four black employees. Similar demands had been
made of several banks and chain of clothing stores. They said they were
working with the mayor's Fair Employment Commission, and refused to meet
CORE's demands. But only the bank at
Jefferson and Washington was targeted for demonstrations. The management there was
ready with an injunction prohibiting demonstrators
from interfering with bank business. And at first, they did
just march outside, but late in the afternoon, some
protesters entered the lobby and others followed. - [Norman] It was not planned
to be more disruptive. It evolved into that. - And we ask you, as officers
and employees of this bank, to please leave our
premises forthwith. ♪ We shall not be, we
shall not be moved ♪ ♪ We shall not be, we
shall not be moved ♪ ♪ Just like a tree that's
planted by the water ♪ ♪ We shall not be moved - [Jim] There was disagreement
among civil rights activists about the use of such
confrontational tactics, but broad support came
after the protest was over and everyone went home. That night and into the weekend, protest organizers were
arrested and charged with violating the injunction. It was then that Jefferson
Bank became a cause. - The Jefferson Bank
was a fascinating example of cohesion
among black lawyers, because that case
mobilized all of us. And on that first day in Judge
Michael Scott's court room, the walls were lined with
black lawyers. (laughs) - [Jim] There were more
demonstrations outside city jail in support of the defendants,
including Norman Seay and city alderman and future
congressman, William Clay. And for months, protesters
continued their pickets outside the bank until they
began to see real change. - The demonstrations ended,
because the banking industry and other companies began
employing African Americans. In fact, while we were in jail, companies were going
out to the Urban League, the NACP, to various
social organizations, political organization, and
employing African Americans. And so that's how it ended. - [Jim] Early the following
year, Mayor Tucker's Employment Commission announced that
since the previous summer local banks had hired
84 Negroes into office, clerical, and
training positions. And throughout the city,
more than 1,000 blacks had been hired or put
in training programs by all kinds of companies. 13 of them had never ever
before hired a black employee. (cars whoosh) It was 1964. Saint Louis would mark
the 200th anniversary of its founding, and a lot of the old things
were making way for the new. (crowd cheers) The Cardinals won
the pennant that year in the old ball
park on North Grant. Within a few years,
it would be gone. (engine rumbles) There were still
street car lots in 1964 that hadn't been
replaced by buses, but they too were a part
of the old Saint Louis and would soon disappear. And downtown,
everyone could see now that the great monument
was going to be more than just a dream. President Lyndon Johnson
visited that year to help kick off the
city's bicentennial. - [President Johnson]
You faced a hard choice, and you made it. The people of Saint Louis
chose progress, not decay. A new spirit of
Saint Louis was born. And today, you look to
the future with new pride and renewed confidence. (wind blows) (gentle music) (rocket roars) - [Jim] There was more
to Saint Louis's image as a city on the move than
its new riverfront monument. Saint Louis now had a big
part in the great adventure of the 1960s, and it
was helping the country to catch up to the Soviet
Union in the space race. (rocket rumbles) McDonald Aircraft had
won the contract in 1959 to build the mercury capsules that carried the first
Americans into space. And President John F
Kennedy had set the goal of reaching the moon by
the end of the decade. (crowd cheers) The president, himself,
came to the plant in 1962 as the space program
entered the next phase, the two man voyages of
the Gemini capsules. (people chatter) - And I can imagine no action, no adventure, which is more
essential and more exciting than to be involved in the
most important and significant adventure that any man has
been able to participate in in the history of the world, and it's going to take
place in this decade. And I congratulate you
on what you have done, and I congratulate you on
being part of this adventure. Thank you. (crowd cheers) - [Jim] Kennedy was
given a tour of the plant by James McDonald who had
started his company in 1939 with just one employee. It had built aircraft
for World War II, Korea, The Cold War, and
now for space travel, and it had grown into one of Saint Louis's
largest employers. Its location, by Lambert Field, had helped make North County
a booming suburban area. (people clap) Before the war, Florissant
had been a little town with just a few thousand people, old old homes, corner groceries,
and neighborhood taverns. Between 1950 and 1960, it grew
from 3,800 to 38,000 people. - Well I came to
Florissant in 1958, and I had been living
in University City. Well I tell you until my
husband's family moved down to Florissant, I didn't
have any idea where it was, much less how to get out here. It might as well had
been Kansas City. - [Jim] There were growing
pains as this small town grew into a giant suburb. Newcomers versus old timers on issues like
historic preservation, and there was heated debate
over a new city charter, which passed, and the
old mayor was voted out. And even though the post-war
housing shortage was over, the growth continued. By 1970, Florissant had a
population of 65,000 people. Much of the county's gain had been the city's loss. - I think with the
civil rights movement, many people who were
living, especially in North Saint Louis, were fearful of what
was going to happen. They were fearful that
their property values were going to be dropping. They didn't want to be
the last white family in the neighborhood. And so they were looking
for an escape route. And Florissant was a
logical, natural place for them to come, and they did. - It's important to remember this is a world before
401Ks and estate planning. The only thing of
any significance
that most people own, if they can even do
that, is their homes. And that's a very important
thing to keep in mind when you try understand
why people were so afraid, why people were made so panicky by the prospect of
losing all the equity. They didn't have
any other cushion. - [Jim] And what
they saw happening in
the old neighborhood was real that when
blacks began to move into a formerly all
white neighborhood, the houses began selling
for lower prices. It wasn't just the white home
owners who made that happen. Real estate agents,
black and white, took advantage of and
sometimes created instability, and banks, even federal
government policies, considered white
suburban neighborhoods to be good investments, older, racially-changing
neighborhoods, bad investments. - So all of a sudden,
you've got a team of people helping make this a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody believed in the '60s that there was ever going
to be stable integration that neighborhoods would
reach some sort of rough proportions, and then
stay that way for a while. Neighborhoods were
perceived as being either on the way up, or on the way down. And most urban neighborhoods
were seen as on the way down. (street car jingles) - [Jim] There was a
time even into the '50s when the only part of the
county many Saint Louisans knew was what they saw on
the long street car ride to Creve Coeur Lake,
a popular day trip. A car or bus trip over
the Missouri River Bridge into Saint Charles
was a real adventure, but then the new Interstate
70 bridge opening in 1958. And two years later, the
Sunday paper's map of display homes showed one in Saint
Charles and one already in Saint Peters. There were dozens more
in what had once been rural Saint Louis County, and almost none in the
city of Saint Louis or its older suburbs. University City had
been the Florissant of the street car era, and it had continued
to grow after the war, but by 1960, many
of its buildings and much of its
population was aging, and the Old Loop shopping
district was fading. And then in 1962,
the word spread the first black
family had moved in. - There was this moment
when everyone panicked, and said, "Oh, what
happened in Saint Louis "is gonna happen here. "Who's gonna be next?" And the signs began going up, and there really was a
sense of powerlessness that forces bigger than we were
might destroy this community that we all loved. - [Jim] Over the next few years, University City was a
community in change. And while city officials
and commissions tried to prevent the panic, for
sale signs kept going up. Some real estate agents
went door to door looking for business, warning
the white home owners that now was the
time to get out. - My very first city
council meeting in '67, I mean, there were
mobs of people saying, "You're either gonna do
something, or we're leaving." And so we passed a
whole series of laws. Now I look back and we
passed a no solicitation, no real estate signs
could be posted. That lasted a couple years
before the courts threw it out. But you know what? They gave us breathing room. And since the fear was that we would have overcrowding,
and we would have deterioration of property, was there
something we could do? Was there a law we could pass? Was there something
we could put in effect that would prevent
the deterioration and prevent overcrowding? And that was the
occupancy permit. - [Jim] The problem with
blight in urban neighborhoods wasn't so much the
lack of laws and codes, but the difficulty of
enforcement and eviction. By requiring and
occupancy permit, U City could make sure
the laws were followed before property changed hands
and before people moved in. Some civil right
activists called it the negro occupancy permit law. But black hoe owners already
living in University City had been among the
first demanding the
council do something. - We took the heat from
the real estate industry, and the lawyers, and the
civil rights community, and all the other people
who thought there had to be something wrong with this. (upbeat music) - [Jim] Many whites did move
out, and many blacks moved in. Housing prices declined
before they went back up. And the pattern of racial
change, abandonment, and blight had been stopped. Even a full block
by block integration had not been achieved. There were those in
the '60s who believed a fully integrated
community might exist if it could be built
from the ground up. In the empty spaces of the
Mill Creek Urban Renewal Area, nicknamed Hiroshima
Flats by the critics, low rent housing was being
built by private developers backed by the
federal government. This was to be a new
kind of housing project. - I wanted to keep
people in the city, and I wanted to be
integrated, frankly. And all the projects
rebuilt were either white or they were black. They were not. So, that's the reason we
decided that we would undertake to build Laclede Town. So we did it, and it
was successful from
the very beginning. We had a waiting list,
three and 400 people. - And the people who came
to live in Laclede Town came from everywhere
and anywhere, socioeconomically,
ethnically, racially. It was just really wonderful
to see how we worked it. We had our differences. People there were like, "Well, "we're supposed to
have differences." (upbeat music) - [Jim] But that
integration and diversity, the students, the artists,
teachers, activists, it didn't happen naturally. Laclede Town was run by a
man named Jerome Berger, and he was the social engineer. It didn't matter what federal
rules said about fairness and non-discrimination,
he decided who got
in and who didn't and into which apartment
in which building. - His role was clearly to
make sure that this was, if not utopian,
an ideal community made up of a whole bunch of
different kinds of people that were going to make
this new concept work and integration in all its form. - [Jim] Planners and
officials from other cities came to Saint Louis to see
what made Laclede Town work, and it maintained its
reputation well into the 1970s. But then the pattern
of urban decline began. - I know we stayed 'til '77, and she had stayed on there
for a while after that, but it got rough
and it got tough, and it was not
fun to live there, and then began to question
where it was going, and it wasn't going where it
needed to and had promised in we wished it had. And you could say it's the
idealism of the '60s and such, that kind of thinking, but there were loads of
people who wanted that to stay on, and we worked at it. (gentle music) (helicopter whirls) - [Jim] The Gateway
Arch was topped off on the morning of
October 28th, 1965. National Geographic
featured Saint Louis in its November issue
saying, "A new spirit soared "in mid America's
proud old city." Raymond Tucker was quoted
as saying, "The era "of the wrecking ball
was just about over, "that Saint Louis
had made the room "and now it could grow again." But by then, Tucker
was out of office. The man who had overseen
the building of the arch was defeated by an alderman
who would now take over the marketing plan. The new mayor was a colorful
man with a colorful name of Alfonso J Cervantes. He had the energy to lead what
he and just about everyone else was talking about. - The rebirth of Saint Louis. - I found Al Cervantes to be
an absolutely fascinating man dedicated to what he was doing. Tucker and he didn't get on. Civic Progress and
he didn't get on. He started his own group,
but considerable notch down from Civic Progress,
The Ambassadors, because he wasn't Civic
Progress's kinda guy. - Cervantes was a (fist
pounds) do-it-my-way kinda guy, and that didn't
always fly with some of our strong personalities. Still doesn't today. (people chatter)
(people clap) - [Jim] When
Cervantes took office, Saint Louis was on a roll. The new baseball and football
stadium opened in 1966, and the city hosted the
All Star game that summer. And in the following two
season, the Cardinals would be in the World Series beating the Red Socks in '67,
and losing in seven games to the Tigers in '68. (puck slaps) At the arena, a collection
of hockey players was being turned into
the new expansion team, the Saint Louis Blues, offsetting the loss
of the basketball team when the Hawks moved to Atlanta. In the '60s, Saint Louis
would win some and lose some, and nobody knew that
better than AJ Cervantes. The mayor is remembered for
helping to bring a replica of Columbus's ship, the Santa
Maria, to the riverfront as a new tourist attraction, and then it broke free in a
storm and sank in the river. It was repaired
and brought back, but it just didn't make it. It was taken away to Florida
where it was destroyed in a fire. - He was always out there
trying to get something done, but that marketing
enthusiasm can sometimes get you in trouble. - [Jim] An even bigger
and more expensive fiasco was the Spanish Pavilion,
said to be the most beautiful building at the New
York World's Fair. After its closing,
the Pavilion was free to anyone who wanted to
take it apart, move it, and put it back together. Cervantes was convinced
it belonged in
downtown Saint Louis. - I knew it was just be great
as a tourist attraction, and that people from
all over the world would then come to see the
Spanish International Pavilion. - [Jim] Private funds were
raised for the project, which became far more
expensive than anyone imagined, and then when it was all done,
it just didn't seem clear what the Spanish Pavilion
was supposed to do or be. It quickly ran into
financial problems, and eventually was sold
and became the base of a new downtown hotel. But Mayor Cervantes
would leave his mark. He pushed hard for a bond issue that built a brand new
downtown convention center, a key to the city's new
business of tourism. But one of the most important
pieces of the new downtown was one of the least glamorous. The Poplar Street
Bridge opened in 1967, an eight lane, toll-free bride
at which more than 100 miles of local interstate
highways would converge. They would help to bring
the visitors to the arch, the stadium, and the
convention center, but every day the highways would also
be packed with cars heading out of the city,
passing the aging neighborhoods and stores, and going out to
the new suburban subdivisions and shopping centers. - If we cannot get,
know all the answers, we need to know. We can and do know that for the problems
of urbanization, this is the decade of decision. (helicopter whirls) (gentle music) - The Gateway Arch was
a grand achievement, the result of many ideas
that had evolved over decades even generations, a great symbol of
confidence and pride, but it was completed
at a time when this and many other cities
with a glorious past were facing a very
uncertain future. For "Decades,"
I'm Jim Kirchherr. (rocket roars)
