Can Saving a Building Save East St. Louis’ Future?
Date Posted: September 24, 2024
Posted In: Discussion, Regionalism,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A group of residents, advocates and history buffs is trying to save a historic school here — and turn the tide on the town’s future, too.
The former Lincoln School, erected 138 years ago, was the city’s first school for Black students. It survived the 1917 massacre that targeted East St. Louis’ Black residents, and rode through the town’s economic collapse in the second half of the 20th century.
But it’s been at least 15 years since the two-story, white brick school building at North Sixth Street and St. Louis Avenue has seen life. Its future is tenuous. Overgrown brush suffocates the northeast wall. Windows are broken. The preservation group Landmarks Illinois named it one of the state’s most endangered places this year.
Now the East St. Louis Historical Society is hoping to save it — and the town’s history — before both are lost to time.
“Sometimes, when all you see is devastation,” said society Executive Director Jaye Willis, “you don’t understand that that isn’t the entire story and that the story can be changed.”
In recent years, residents have sought to rectify that. As interest in Black history, and in righting old wrongs, has surged across the country, local efforts have bloomed, too. St. Louis said last year it was setting aside money to repair Chuck Berry’s former home and Tina Turner’s Imperial Club, among other historic African American sites. In Valley Park, historians and activists want to erect a memorial in honor of a Black man lynched from a bridge spanning the Meramec River. And earlier this month, in nearby Brooklyn, Illinois, the oldest city in America incorporated by a Black majority, archaeologists are hoping to find artifacts of the town’s founders to help it gain entry into the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s not just East St. Louis history,” said resident Jerome King, who volunteers with the historical society. “It’s American history.”