The Arch at 60 Years: Memories of Construction and of Famous Protests
Pictured Above: On July 14, 1964, Percy Green and fellow activist Rich Daly focused attention on the lack of Black employment on the Gateway Arch by climbing a work ladder and chaining themselves to it.
Date Posted: October 28, 2025
Posted In: Discussion, Regionalism, What we are thinking about, Workforce,
From St. Louis Public Radio: In July 1964, activists Percy Green and Richard Daly scaled the unfinished north leg of the Gateway Arch, climbing 125 feet up a construction ladder to protest hiring practices that excluded Black workers from working on the monument.
The protest came days after President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Percy Green was challenging that this was a federal monument that was rising, government jobs needed to be hiring Black workers as well,” said Andrew Wanko, a public historian at the Missouri History Museum. “He was up there for more than four hours.”
Green and Daily’s protest moved National Park Service officials to pressure construction companies to hire African American workers and contractors for the 630-foot structure.
Worker Walkout
Two years after Green and Daly’s climb, protests broke out after white laborers staged a walkout in protest of the hiring of Black plumbers Elijah Smith and Oliver Parker for work in the Gateway Arch visitors center bathrooms.
The two protests led the U.S. Department of Justice to file its first pattern of practice lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Wanko noted.
“They got the St. Louis building trades to sign an agreement stating that they would end all practices that were discriminatory,” he said. “It was the first time the federal government had ever enforced equal opportunity employment anywhere in the country.”
Green and Daly’s famous climb is just one of several important civil rights moments that occurred on the grounds of Gateway Arch National Park — particularly on its north side.
“Civil Rights Leg” of Arch
“I think of the north leg of the Arch as the civil rights leg of the Arch,” said St. Louis historian and architect John Guenther, citing another instance at the site nearly 120 years prior.
In 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom in St. Louis Circuit Court. The first two trials took place at the Old Courthouse. The state ruled in favor of the Scotts’ freedom. In 1854, however, their enslaver, John Sandford, appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. That third trial was held in the Papan Building on First Street, and it overturned the lower court’s decision and ruled in favor of Sandford. The case became one of the most important ever tried in the country.