Holding Action
WYANT, WILLIAM K. Jr.
A residential neighborhood is infegrated — and renewed HOLDING ACTION By William K. Wyant Jr. There are six Negro and 23 white families in residence now on Windermere Place, a street of large and...
...This is the closest I am ever going to come to being a missionary...
...When the West End Community Conference started its counter-attack early in 1955, the tide of Negro migration already had arrived and parts of the area, for a variety of reasons (including the relaxation of zoning during the World War II housing emergency), were in decay...
...others did not...
...It would not underwrite housing loans, thus failing to provide the support that normally steadies property values...
...Louis Board of Education's administrators, from Superintendent of Instruction Philip J. Hickey on down...
...Human nature being somewhat cynical, it took the Conference some time to convince newspapers, the general public, and the Negroes that the organization was not just another property-owners' combine, intent on turning the clock back...
...Impressive pillars and an iron gate mark the entrance, just off busy Union Boulevard...
...For example, an old house would sell for $10,000...
...In subsequent days, two "For Sale" signs in front of white-owned homes came down...
...The six-member schools committee, which includes one Negro, made its presence felt...
...Last August it gave a luncheon attended by 48 teachers of the area's six elementary schools and one high school...
...This was drastic surgery to salvage the situation until new facilities could be built...
...resident of the neighborhood most of his life, was the first board chairman...
...At every hand, in the area of the Conference's interest, there were indications of a slide into the abyss...
...This school had 1,100 children in space designed for 700...
...Louis to receive "conservation project" status...
...The houses are handsome, three-storied, old-fashioned structures of brick or stone...
...Much of the 150-block area had been downgraded to multiple-dwelling use...
...It involves not only the fostering of good relations between people, but the fiercest imaginable hand-to-hand, day-to-day combat against forces of physical decay...
...is not good enough...
...The upgrading meant that no additional rooming houses could be started in that section...
...The real estate committee, housewives working by day and their businessmen husbands assisting at night, took on the job of checking newspapers and legal reports for every sale or other transaction involving neighborhood real estate...
...In our block there is a professor at Washington University, another man rich enough to have a chauffeur, and a laborer...
...The objective of the Conference schools committee is to foster conditions under which integrated education can be made to work...
...They have small, well-kept yards in front and large gardens at rear...
...Andy Brown Jr., who recently moved to Windermere Place from another street close by, and is the current chairman of the Conference board, recalls that it took six meetings...
...Park J. White, wife of a pediatrician deeply concerned with Negro health problems, served as temporary chairman until a board of directors could be elected...
...Even so, neither Brown nor his associates feel they can afford complacency...
...The Conference undertook to convince St...
...A vital factor, however, was the presence in the area of an extraordinary number of people of broadly liberal bent, accustomed to leadership, unafraid of responsibility and fully aware of how much might depend on the example they set...
...The same houses farther out would cost twice as much...
...So did a variety of petty incidents at the nuisance level, such as vandalism to teachers' automobiles when they attended night PTA meetings, disciplinary infractions in classrooms and hallways, and so on...
...You might call this whole thing a sort of holding action,' remarks one of the group...
...Louis's progressive Mayor, has lent warm praise to the Conference...
...Here, then, is story of community action by private citizens that may well be studied in every city in the nation...
...Louis experience contains a lesson that is valid elsewhere, it is that constituted authority—local, state and Federal—must give the front-line troops more help...
...of the St...
...The extraordinary thing about the situation on Windermere Place and its environs— an area criss-crossed by tree-lined streets of old homes and apartments in varying stages of repair—is not that Negroes have moved in but that the white residents, for the time being at least, are not following the old pattern and moving out en masse...
...At the same time, the zoning committee established liaison with the City Plan Commission and the Department of Public Safety to obtain better law enforcement...
...Ultimately, the success or failure of the West End Community Conference integration effort will depend on what happens along a much wider front...
...large apartments were cut up...
...In St...
...If there was indeed a "containment agreement" among propertied interests of the city, ordaining that Negroes might move to one place but not to another, as the Conference says, this was its execution...
...Thomas Kinsella...
...Zoning standards in the area, part of which was like Windermere Place and part definitely slummy, had gone under in the war period...
...More significantly, the St...
...It is a good feeling to be part of something you know is ethically and morally right—even if it fails, which it won't," says Mrs...
...He is a staunch church-goer, young, cheerful, energetic and zealous...
...To appreciate this, one must consider the background...
...Brown, an engineer for an electrical concern by day, spends his evenings elbow-deep in one Conference project or another...
...Classes were being taught in the old bicycle storage room and in the gymnasium...
...We came out of curiosity, to see whether it was an organization to exclude people," Mrs...
...The policy statement was adopted in April, not without considerable travail and opposition...
...This spring, the Conference rented space in a vacant store for an office, and has hired a girl to answer the telephone and help with the tremendous work load...
...The sequel was that city planners came up with an ambitious blueprint for development of the entire territory...
...and hoping things work out...
...She and her husband are among the white Conference members who moved into the section after it had been infiltrated by Negroes...
...zoning laws are being enforced, and the city has singled out the entire section for concentrated planning attention...
...Its zeal and common sense have won the cooperation of William H. Coibion, director of the City Plan Commission, and his staff...
...Windermere Place is the focal point for an effort by well-intentioned white and Negro citizens to work out together the common problems of a truly integrated urban community-Generalship for this effort is provided by the bi-racial West End Community Conference, an organization with a dull name and a bright purpose...
...Subsequent meetings have been held at Pilgrim Congregational Church, which welcomes Negroes to membership, and at churches of other denominations...
...The letters were tough or conciliatory, as need be...
...The military analogy is not precise, but the speaker's meaning is clear enough...
...We were misunderstood, and sometimes the idea was hard to put across...
...Had not the United States Supreme Court ruled that Americans might live and attend school where they chose...
...Even so, he might lose the house, and the dreary cycle would be repeated...
...The consequence was overcrowding and blight...
...Nobody is claiming anything like victory yet, but the last year has seen major battles won and the arrival of reinforcements...
...When asked why he is willing to give so much time and effort...
...On the fringes of the outward expansion of the burgeoning Negro population, what happened typically was that a few Negroes purchased homes in a white block, perhaps paying premium prices...
...Here again the problem was to stave off an exodus while attempting to intrude an element of stability...
...The Government, in effect, favored integration but would not bet a penny on it...
...Since 1950, the proportion of Negroes has jumped from 1 per cent to more than 10 per cent...
...Neighborhood deterioration is no less a problem for churches than for individual citizens, and so is integration...
...This business of looking the other way...
...In 1930 St...
...Louis newspapers that property for sale or rent should be listed without regard to race, but got nowhere...
...Nearly everybody came, including a number of Negro neighbors...
...Last New Year's Day, Charles Nagel, a tall and eminently civilized St...
...Fine old homes became rooming houses...
...It was not a pretty thing to watch, nor was it calculated to improve race relations...
...For Sale" signs marked the forward boundary of Negro advance, and the real estate men skittered about along the line, like gulls at the tide's flow...
...There was much frank discussion of difficulties, and a series of workshop meetings was arranged...
...Negro ghettoes expanded steadily outward from the city's center, consuming scores of Windermere Places where the city's first citizens, in terms of money, pride and influence, once lived...
...Another vital line of action was carried on by the organization's public schools committee...
...Louis Urban League's Negro executive director, M. Leo Bohanon, approves...
...We like it simply because it isn't homogeneous...
...Raymond R. Tucker, St...
...It kept in close touch with the St...
...This was done at the Conference's urging and was the most comprehensive upgrading of such property in the city's history...
...Brown says: "I am personally interested in seeing integration work in St...
...A rather conservative-minded business man...
...The assurance of community support and interest seemed to stiffen the morale of some of the older white teachers, who, having always been accustomed to teaching white children, tended to want to retire...
...It was complete with new schools, parks, playgrounds and "tot-lots...
...One small sector can be outflanked, pinched off and overwhelmed...
...The intensity of the Conference's battle against powerful forces has brought encouraging results, but cannot be maintained indefinitely...
...Apartments had been carved up, and the parked automobiles of the transients choked the streets...
...Louis County...
...Volunteers stood on street corners to obtain data on vehicle flow...
...The organization he heads was spontaneous in its origins but modeled itself on the noted Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference in Chicago...
...It became apparent we could not stabilize the neighborhood without doing something about the zoning violations," Brown says...
...It is the firm belief of Conference leaders that high-level real estate interests had designated the entire section for all-Negro occupancy, on the assumption that all the whites would vacate...
...Not only that, but in September the city notified the West End Community Conference that the 150-block segment had been duly designated as the third in St...
...Residents of all races, creeds and national origins shall be welcomed to the full rights, privileges and responsibilities of the community," said a statement of policy hammered out last year, "not primarily as members of a certain group but as persons in their own right, and shall be eligible for full participating membership in the Conference...
...White people can do a beautiful job of creating slums without assistance from any quarter...
...The newcomers had to live somewhere...
...He calls what has been done "a remarkable experiment and a successful one," adding: "We wouldn't have worked with them if we had felt they were anything but sincere.'' But was all this so difficult or so extraordinary...
...Many of the headaches the committee faced related to integration...
...The occasion went off handsomely...
...There are six Negro and 23 white families in residence now on Windermere Place, a street of large and comfortable homes in the heart of what once was the most fashionable section of St...
...Overcrowding and a wide disparity in preparation among pupils of the same grade had to be dealt with...
...Churches have given the Conference powerful support...
...Nagel in inviting everybody on the street to their house, 27 Windermere Place, for eggnog...
...It was formed in April 1955 by 200 persons who met at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension...
...They did so against the advice of friends...
...Rooming houses had become abundant, many of them illegal because it was expensive to make the fire-protection modifications required by law...
...local government has been as wary of dealing with it as Congress...
...Many white parents are perfectly willing to have their children attend integrated schools, Conference leaders found, provided scholastic standards are maintained...
...We figured a school with an even percentage of white and Negro children would work," Brown declares in explaining the Conference's viewpoint...
...We deliberately chose to live here," she says...
...The largest upgrading of residential blocks as to land use in the city's history was engineered ; the flight of the white population has been curbed...
...Louis churches, like people, have reacted in two ways: Some have joined their congregations in flight to more homogeneous areas in the suburbs, where there are no poor and few Negroes...
...Louis patrician who is director of the City Art Museum, joined Mrs...
...Louis and other Midwestern cities have been absorbing massive numbers of Negroes from the South...
...Meanwhile, the Conference made a land use and traffic survey in cooperation with the City Plan Commission...
...To meet the monthly payments, perhaps $200 to $300, he would be forced to take in a multiplicity of roomers...
...and Mrs...
...In one elementary school, Negro pupils comprised 65 per cent of those in attendance, and the faculty consisted of 35 Negro and 18 white teachers...
...We're interested in people, and in finding the answer to this question: Can people really change things, or does nature take its o ?? course: The Conference's zoning and real estate committees went immediately into action, and action was overdue...
...Some of the city's leading citizens, including Museum Director Nagel, took a turn at this chore...
...These problems obviously were broader than any question of Negro infiltration or Negro occupation...
...They have found the experience richly rewarding, in a number of ways...
...The generally inferior economic status of Negro purchasers, however, was an aggravating factor in this situation...
...If the St...
...As such, the area will get a two-year face-lifting that calls for expenditure of $65,000 in bond-issue funds, and there will be a careful check by the city to see that zoning laws are followed...
...The event was widely publicized...
...He combines liberal views with notable ability to call a spade a spade, an attitude that might be said to typify the Conference's guiding spirits...
...If advertisements were out of line, or "For Sale" signs were larger than the legal maximum, the committee wrote letters to owners and to real estate concerns, reminding them of what the law said...
...The Conference committee requested in this instance that, when teachers were replaced, they be white...
...On the evening the question was asked, he worked at one Conference session until shortly after 11 o'clock, drank a cup of coffee and dashed off to attend another meeting a few doors down the street...
...Carl Meyers, wife of an insurance executive, remembers in speaking of the organization meeting at the Church of the Ascension...
...It also approached Federal housing loan officials in an effort to get a firm underpinning for real estate sales, but also without effect thus far...
...Louis Post-Dispatch was raised in Greensboro, N. C. and Atlanta, educated at Harvard, and trained on Savannah .ind Atlanta newspapers...
...The center of fashion, residentially, moved steadily westward, away from the river and toward the suburbs of St...
...We believe we can have and maintain a stable community on an integrated basis...
...The Conference upset the cycle by accepting integration but fighting tooth and nail against the processes of deterioration that had attended the transition elsewhere...
...In this situation the arm of the Government, the Federal Housing Administration, exerted no steadying influence but contributed to the chaos...
...Louis, a border city that is markedly Southern in some of its political attitudes, certain of the problems involved in the Conference's undertakings are of almost transcendental difficulty...
...Under high-hearted leaders, the Conference is trying to foster conditions under which the races can live side by side without tension, in an atmosphere of stability and peace...
...The people in the neighborhood like their homes, which are roomy, well-built for the most part, and convenient to their jobs...
...some have elected, by deliberate choice, to remain...
...The Conference also became convinced, as a practical matter, that if the percentage of Negro pupils got above a certain level the consequence would be a rapid transition to virtual all-Negro status...
...They are dedicated to the proposition that white and Negro citizens can live in the same neighborhood, but they have found that it takes a bit of doing...
...Louis Board of Aldermen approved a bill rezoning a 32-block area from multiple dwelling to two-family status...
...After the percentage went over the 50 per cent mark, the slippage back toward segregation was inevitable...
...In June the St...
...Louis had 93,580 Negroes and in 1955 an estimated 200,000, the city's total population meanwhile having increased by less than 50,000...
...The buyer might pay $750 down and saddle himself with three mortgages...
...But until integration is further along, something must be done to maintain an equal percentage...
...The trick is to get integration, and not simply a displacement of one race by another...
...Louis proceeded with integration of schools shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its mandate...
...It is only in the last three or four years that Negroes have lived on Windermere Place...
...It was early last summer that the Conference's intensive labors began to produce tangible gains and things began to look un...
...George Arms, wife of the director of Educational Television Station KETC at Washington University, who heads the schools committee...
...This was not an easy attitude either to strike or to maintain, but it was based on practical as well as idealistic considerations...
...Housing, even more than education, as the strongest hastion of racial discrimination in both the South and the North...
...Louis, and I am interested in the neighborhood where I have always lived...
...Louis...
...Then other white householders went into panic, selling out for what they could get and moving further out...
...Robert Bassett, now president of the Missouri Association for Social W elfare...
...It has about 800 members and represents a 150-block segment of the city with a population of approximately 25,000...
...Unscrupulous real estate men, white and Negro, battened on the stampede...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 27
