I am ashamed.

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson (published in April, 2020) is a very painful book to read. Almost every chapter makes me ashamed. I was born in the city of St. Louis, and lived in St. Louis or St. Louis county until I graduated from Washington University. My mother was born there, and my father arrived there as a young man. Both of my parents also went to Washington University, and they lived in the city throughout their adult lives. Although I have spent very little time in St. Louis as an adult, I identify as a native. I also think of myself as a well-informed and well-meaning progressive, with decent attitudes and a fair education. But, it turns out, I knew very little about the meaning of much of the history of my native city. Both Johnson's political history and his cultural history of St. Louis (including its contribution to ragtime and other American musical genres) were rich and very new to me. 

On every page of The Broken Heart of America I learned how inadequate and misleading my education was. I realized what a one-sided and bigoted view I have held when it comes to motive and results of the racist history of St. Louis, which Johnson makes clear is typical of the racist history of our entire country. The leadership of St. Louis in the 18th century supported the genocide of the American Indians. The  Dred Scott decision recognizing nation-wide slavery (1857) had strong St. Louis roots. Documenting the bloody local history of the Civil War and its aftermath, Johnson shows exactly how St. Louis perpetuated the denial of rights to Black people. In 1917 the horrifying blood-bath that victimized the Black residents of East St. Louis was another example of stopping Black people from exercising their rights to a decent life. All these examples and many others were entirely outside my knowledge. I read with horrified fascination.

Even the famous Louisiana Purchase Exposition -- that is, the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair -- embodied the pervasive racist practices of the time in employment and other areas. The "anthropology" of the fair involved bringing specimens of humanity to the fairgrounds where dark-skinned natives were kept in the largest human zoo in history. They served fair-goers as an example of the progress and civilization of the American way and of the supposed backwardness of the non-white races. I learned a lot by reading Johnson's account of this underlying reality -- and inhumanity -- of the fair.  

Innovations in city planning and in racially biased housing and jobs in 20th century St. Louis were models of duplicity, successfully disguising their outright racism and commitment to white supremacy by using seemingly neutral language. Officials and citizens pretended that polices were fair while completely excluding non-white Americans from participating in the expanding prosperity of the city and the nation. I recall the words "slum clearance," but what this really meant was the destruction of functioning Black neighborhoods, in ways I never realized. The segregation of the city, mostly black, and the suburbs, mostly white, resulted from a long series of intentional injustices, typified by the famous catastrophe of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project and the media depiction of Webster Groves as a perfect American suburb. 

In the context of all the institutional racism of the city, Johnson also describes a number of cutting-edge efforts by anti-racist political organizations. Beginning in the 1930s, when the Communist Party was a leader in pressuring for social justice, St. Louis civil rights groups and individuals continued with some of the nation's earliest lunch-counter sit ins and other actions. The finale of the book is a discussion of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, and the subsequent protest movement. Everyone who read newspapers or watched TV a few years ago is aware of the corruption of the Ferguson police, whose systematic racism became widely known instead of successfully forgotten like so many racist events.

My brief summary may sound like a lot of platitudes or generalizations, but the book is incredibly rich in specifics of St. Louis history from its founding to the present-day system of racist policies that characterize the city. Every chapter is rich in descriptions of personalities, as well as the more standard types of history. I especially liked the way Johnson provided the life histories of people such as the Indians who traveled with Lewis and Clark (not necessarily by choice); Dred Scott and his wife; protestors and organizers; various musicians who played in the bars and dives in downtown St. Louis; and the author's portraits of hypocritical politicians and vicious police officers.

I am ashamed at how little I knew of St. Louis and national racism throughout history. Furthermore, I'm chagrined at the relevance of historic abuses to this week's political outcome, demonstrating that right now more voters support racist candidates and policies than I thought would happen. So little changes in our society! As a writer for Salon.com put it: "What is actually known with great certainty about the 2020 presidential election is that white supremacy and racism have been reaffirmed and not repudiated." (source)

blog post © 2020 mae sander