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Chapter Two: “Democratizing the City, Instead of Just a City Beautiful” : Segregation, City Planning, and the Roots of Interracial Organizing
- University of Missouri Press
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58 Chapter Two “Democratizing the City, Instead of Just a City Beautiful” Segregation,City Planning,and the Roots of Interracial Organizing At this point the segregationists say,‘We haven’t time to split hairs . . . The Negro must be given his fixed place and be made to know that this is a white man’s community. Negroes must stay among themselves.’ This . . . is a false and pernicious teaching in a free community. If such a measure becomes a law, it cannot obtain if the community remains soundly progressive and democratic.This community belongs to no one race group . . . It belongs to the people . . . living here. All who struggle and suffer and serve in any capacity; all who buy food, clothing and the comforts of life; all who buy property and pay taxes; all who read and think and cast a ballot—all these without regard to race, creed or position, are the makers and owners of the city, and impartially should reap its benefits. —Rev. George E. Stevens, Negro Segregation (1915) S t. Louis mayor Rolla Wells’s inaugural theme was the “New St. Louis,” meaning a better, cleaner, more beautiful, friendlier city bound together by a sense of shared purpose, with the approaching World’s Fair of 1904 as the capstone. One incarnation of the ubiquitous “solidarity of movement” that Wells observed surrounding the World’s Fair developed a national following and became known as the City Beautiful movement.1 This movement summoned urban residents across ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic class lines to become part of an “ever-vigilant, citizen community.” While pushing a variety of municipal reforms, City Beautiful advocates made restoration of an emer- Segregation, City Planning, and Roots of Interracial Organizing 59 gent “citizenship principle” their primary goal.“Nothing less than a new sense of public and especially civic service was to be cultivated as a means of revitalizing the city and achieving the public good.”2 Urban reformers of every breed laid claim to the new citizenship principle, which extended beyond concerns over merely the physical appearance of the city to include more efficient and better coordinated efforts on behalf of the city’s economic poor. African American social welfare organizers embraced the new citizenship ethic wholeheartedly , but while they did so, they simultaneously challenged the legitimacy of a City Beautiful that tolerated a “city segregated.” The City Beautiful Movement As nationwide local reform efforts increased at the beginning of the twentieth century, becoming better organized and concerted, “the city” became a dominant metaphor in public discourse where citizens with different urban agendas began to interact and find common ground. The new citizenship ethic found rhetorical and practical expression in a variety of urban reform endeavors , not the least of which was the national movement in city planning. Frederick Olmsted, Jr., one of the movement’s foremost spokesmen prior to World War I, defined city planning as “the attempt to exert a well-considered control on behalf of the people of a city over the development of their physical environment as a whole.” A particular phase of city planning with its origins between the years 1897–1902, the City Beautiful movement sought to upgrade the physical appearance of the nation’s cities and towns. Largely cultural in expression , the City Beautiful in American planning history must be viewed within the context of Progressive era reform, for as historian Jon A. Peterson observes, it is more than simply an “episode in the history of architectural taste and urban design.”3 Its historical context (and,indeed,that of American city planning as a whole) reflects the generational concerns of liberal reformers. Reformers of the Gilded Age, though committed to public service, tended to view their role “as that of aristocratic guardians protecting popular government over the long run from its supposed friends.”4 Most members of the new elite, the Progressive era reformers like St. Louis mayor Rolla Wells, viewed themselves not as members of a privileged “nobility” but as responsible “leading citizens” rendering unselfish service.5 In most cities,local reform efforts had functioned initially on an ad hoc basis, with different organizations focusing on district issues. The politically minded had stressed more reactive goals, such as defeating the local boss, retrenching the city budget, or suppressing vice. Issues other than machine politics had also claimed other reformers’ attention, but the interconnections between matters as disparate as the municipal ownership of utilities, playgrounds, philanthropic 60 Groping toward Democracy housing, and improved street cleaning had not seemed urgent...