Directions
You will read an excerpt from Savage Inequalities.
For this writing assignment:
1. Read the Savage Inequalities page posted below
2. Summarize in your own words the following from the article:
-Irl Solomon’s history class
-Jennifer’s views on schools in poor area (Bronx & East St. Louis)
-Contrast East St Louis with the school in Rye, New York
3. After your summary, include your own perspective/opinion about this article. For example, given your experience do you think in the past 20 years anything has changed in our system? If so, what? If not, why have things remained the same?
East of anywhere, writes a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, often evokes the other side of the tracks. But, for a first-time visitor suddenly deposited on its eerily empty streets, East St. Louis might suggest another world. The city, which is 98 percent black, has no obstetric services, no regular trash collection, and few jobs. Nearly a third of its families live on less than $7,500 a year; 75 percent of its population lives on welfare of some form. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development describes it as the most distressed small city in America. Only three of the 13 buildings on Missouri Avenue, one of the citys major thoroughfares, are occupied. A 13-story office building, tallest in the city, has been boarded up. Outside, on the sidewalk, a pile of garbage fills a ten-foot crater. The city, which by night and day is clouded by the fumes that pour from vents and smokestacks at the Pfizer and Monsanto chemical plants, has one of the highest rates of child asthma in America. It is, according to a teacher at the University of Southern Illinois, a repository for a nonwhite population that is now regarded as expendable. The Post-Dispatch describes it as Americas Soweto. Fiscal shortages have forced the layoff of 1,170 of the citys 1,400 employees in the past 12 years. The city, which is often unable to buy heating fuel or toilet paper for the city hall, recently announced that it might have to cashier all but 10 percent of the remaining work force of 230. In 1989 the mayor announced that he might need to sell the city hall and all six fire stations to raise needed cash. Last year the plan had to be scrapped after the city lost its city hall in a court judgment to a creditor. East St. Louis is mortgaged into the next century but has the highest property-tax rate in the state. Since October 1987, when the citys garbage pickups ceased, the backyards of residents have been employed as dump sites. In the spring of 1988 a policeman tells a visitor that 40 plastic bags of trash are waiting for removal from the backyard of his mothers house. Public health officials are concerned the garbage will attract a plague of flies and rodents in the summer. The policeman speaks of rats as big as puppies in his mothers yard. They are known to the residents, he says, as bull rats. Many people have no cars or funds to cart the trash and simply burn it in their yards. The odor of smoke from burning garbage, says the Post-Dispatch, has become one of the scents of spring in East St. Louis. Railroad tracks still used to transport hazardous chemicals run through the city. Always present, says the Post-Dispatch, is the threat of chemical spills…
The wail of sirens warning residents to evacuate after a spill is common. The most recent spill, the paper says, was at the Monsanto Company plant. Nearly 300 gallons of phosphorous trichloride spilled when a railroad tank was overfilled. About 450 residents were taken to St. Marys Hospital…
The frequency of the emergencies has caused Monsanto to have a standing account at St. Marys. In March of 1989, a task force appointed by Governor James Thompson noted that the city was in debt by more than $40 million, and proposed emergency state loans to pay for garbage collection and to keep police and fire departments in continued operation. The governor, however, blamed the mayor and his administrators, almost all of whom were black, and refused to grant the loans unless the mayor resigned. Thompsons response, said a Republican state legislator, made my heart feel good…. Its unfortunate, but the essence of the problem in East St. Louis is the people who are running things. Residents of Illinois do not need to breathe the garbage smoke and chemicals of East St. Louis. With the interstate highways, says a supervisor of the Illinois Power Company, you can ride around the place and just keep going. . . .
East St. Louis lies in the heart of the American Bottoms the floodplain on the east side of the Mississippi River opposite St. Louis. To the east of the city lie the Illinois Bluffs, which surround the floodplain in a semicircle? Towns on the Bluffs are predominantly white and do not welcome visitors from East St. Louis. The two tiers Bluffs and Bottoms writes James Nowlan, a professor of public policy at Knox College, have long represented … different worlds. Their physical separation, he believes, helps rationalize the psychological and cultural distance that those on the Bluffs have clearly tried to maintain. People on the Bluffs, says Nowlan, overwhelmingly want this separation to continue. Towns on the Bluffs, according to Nowlan, do not pay taxes to address flood problems in the Bottoms, even though these problems are generated in large part by the water that drains from the Bluffs. East St. Louis lacks the funds to cope with flooding problems on its own, or to reconstruct its sewer system, which, according to local experts, is irreparable. The problem is all the worse because the chemical plants in East St. Louis and adjacent towns have for decades been releasing toxins into the sewer system. The pattern of concentrating black communities in easily flooded lowland areas is not unusual in the United States. Larther down the river, for example, in the Delta town of Tunica, Mississippi, people in the black community of Sugar Ditch live in shacks by open sewers that are commonly believed to be responsible for the high incidence of liver tumors and abscesses found in children there. Metaphors of caste like these are everywhere in the United States. Sadly, although dirt and water flow downhill, money and services do not. The dangers of exposure to raw sewage, which backs up repeatedly into the homes of residents in East St. Louis, were first noticed, in the spring of 1989, at a public housing project, Villa Griffin. Raw sewage, says the Post-Dispatch, overflowed into a playground just behind the housing project, which is home to 187 children, forming an oozing lake of . . . tainted water. Two schoolgirls, we are told, experienced hair loss since raw sewage flowed into their homes. While local physicians are not certain whether loss of hair is caused by the raw sewage, they have issued warnings that exposure to raw sewage can provoke a cholera or hepatitis outbreak. A St. Louis health official voices her dismay that children live with waste in their backyards. The development of working sewage systems made cities livable a hundred years ago, she notes. Sewage systems separate us from the Third World. Its a terrible way to live, says a mother at the Villa Griffin homes, as she bails raw sewage from her sink. Health officials warn again of cholera and, this time, of typhoid also. The sewage, which is flowing from collapsed pipes and dysfunctional pumping stations, has also flooded basements all over the city. The citys vacuum truck, which uses water and suction to unclog the citys sewers, cannot be used because it needs $5,000 in repairs. Even when it works, it sometimes cant be used because there isnt money to hire drivers. A single engineer now does the work that 14 others did before they were laid off. By April the pool of overflow behind the Villa Griffin project has expanded into a lagoon of sewage. Two million gallons of raw sewage lie outside the childrens homes…
Sister Julia Huiskamp meets me on King Boulevard and drives me to the Griffin homes. As we ride past blocks and blocks of skeletal structures, some of which are still inhabited, she slows the car repeatedly at railroad crossings. A seemingly endless railroad train rolls past us to the right. On the left: a blackened lot where garbage has been burning. Next to the burning garbage is a row of 12 white cabins, charred by fire. Next: a lot that holds a heap of auto tires and a mountain of tin cans. More burnt houses. More trash fires. The train moves almost imperceptibly across the flatness of the land. Fifty years old, and wearing a blue suit, white blouse, and blue head-cover, Sister Julia points to the nicest house in sight. The sign on the front reads motel, Its a whore-house, Sister Julia says. When she slows the car beside a group of teenage boys, one of them steps out toward the car, and then backs away as she is recognized. The 99 units of the Villa Griffin homes two-story structures, brick on the first floor, yellow wood above form one border of a recessed park and playground that were filled with fecal matter last year when the sewage mains exploded. The sewage is gone now and the grass is very green and looks inviting. When nine- year-old Serena and her seven- year-old brother take me for a walk, however, I discover that our shoes sink into what is still a sewage marsh. An inch-deep residue of fouled water still remains. Serenas brother is a handsome, joyous little boy, but troublingly thin. Three other children join us as we walk along the marsh: Smokey, who is nine years old but cannot yet tell time; Mickey, who is seven; and a tiny child with a ponytail and big brown eyes who talks a constant stream of words that I cant always understand. Hush, Little Sister, says Serena. I ask for her name, but Little Sister is the only name the children seem to know. There go my cousins, Smokey says, pointing to two teenage girls above us on the hill. The day is warm, although were only in the second week of March; several dogs and cats are playing by the edges of the marsh. Its a lot of squirrels here, says Smokey. There go one! This here squirrel is a friend of mine. says Little Sister. None of the children can tell me the approximate time that school begins. One says five oclock. One says six. An-other says that school begins at noon. When I ask what song they sing after the flag pledge, one says Jingle Bells. Smokey cannot decide if he is in the second or third grade. Seven-year-old Mickey sucks his thumb during the walk. The children regale me with a chilling story as we stand beside the marsh. Smokey says his sister was raped and murdered and then dumped behind his school. Other children add more details: Smokeys sister was 11 years old. She was beaten with a brick until she died. The murder was committed by a man who knew her mother. The narrative begins when, without warning, Smokey says, My sister has got killed. She was my best friend, Serena says. They had beat her in the head and raped her, Smokey says. She was hollering out loud, says Little Sister. I ask them when it happened. Smokey says, Last year. Serena then corrects him and she says, Last week. It scared me because I had to cry, says Little Sister. The police arrested one man but they didnt catch the other, Smokey says. Serena says, He was some kin to her. But Smokey objects, He werent no kin to me. He was my mommas friend. Her face was busted, Little Sister says. Serena describes this sequence of events: They told her go behind the school. Theyll give her a quarter if she do. Then they knock her down and told her not to tell what they had did. I ask, Why did they kill her? They was scared that she would tell, Serena says. One is in jail, says Smokey. They caint find the other. Instead of raping little bitty children, they should find themselves a wife, says Little Sister. I hope, Serena says, her spirit will come back and get that man. And kill that man, says Little Sister. Give her another chance to live, Serena says. My teacher came to the funeral, says Smokey. When a little child dies, my momma say a star go straight to Heaven, says Serena. My grandma was murdered, Mickey says out of the blue. Somebody shot two bullets in her head. I ask him, Is she really dead? She dead all right, says Mickey. She was layin there, just dead. I love my friends, Serena says. I dont care if they no kin to me. I care for them. I hope his mother have another baby. Name her for my friend thats dead. I have a cat with three legs. Smokey says. Snakes hate rabbits, Mickey says, again for no apparent reason. Cats hate fishes, Little Sister says. Its a lot of hate, says Smokey.
Later, at the mission Sister Julia tells me this: The Jefferson School, which they attend, is a decrepit hulk. Next to it is a modem school, erected two years ago, which was to have replaced the one that they attend. But the construction was not done correctly. The roof is too heavy for the walls, and the entire structure has begun to sink. It cant be occupied. Smokeys sister was raped and murdered and dumped between the old school and the new one. As the children drift back to their homes for supper, Sister Julia stands outside with me and talks about the health concerns that trouble people in the neighborhood. In the setting sun, the voices of the children fill the evening air. Nourished by the sewage marsh, a field of wild daffodils is blooming. Standing here, you wouldnt think that anything was wrong. The street is calm. The poison in the soil cant be seen. The sewage is invisible and only makes the grass a little greener. Bikes thrown down by children lie outside their kitchen doors. It could be an ordinary twilight in a small suburban town. Night comes on and Sister Julia goes inside to telephone a cab. In another hour, the St. Louis taxis will not come into the neighborhood. In the night, the sky above the East St. Louis area is brownish yellow. Illuminated by the glare from the Mon-santo installation, the smoke is vented from four massive columns rising about 400 feet above the plant. The garish light and tubular structures lend the sky a strange, nightmarish look. Safir Ahmed, a young reporter who has covered East St. Louis for the Post-Dispatch for several years, drives with me through the rutted streets close to the plant and points out blocks of wooden houses without plumbing. Straggling black children walk along a road that has no sidewalks. The soil is all contaminated here, he says. Almost directly over our heads the plant is puffing out a cloud of brownish smoke that rises above the girders of the plant within a glow of reddish-gold illumination. Two auto bridges cross the Mississippi River to St. Louis. To the south is the Poplar Street Bridge. The bridge to the north is named for Martin Luther King. It takes three minutes to cross the bridge, says Ahmed. For white people in St. Louis, it could be a thousand miles long. On the southern edge of East St. Louis, tiny shack-like houses stand along a lightless street. Immediately behind these houses are the giant buildings of Monsanto, Big River Zinc, Cerro Copper, the American Bottoms Sewage Plant and Trade Waste Incineration one of the largest hazardous-waste-incineration companies in the United States. The entire city lies downwind of this. When the plant gives off emissions that are viewed as toxic, an alarm goes off. People who have breathed the smoke are given a cash payment of $400 in exchange for a release from liability The decimation of the men within the population is quite nearly total. Four of five births in East St. Louis are to single mothers. Where do the men go? Some to prison. Some to the military. Many to an early death. Dozens of men are living in the streets or sleeping in small, isolated camps be-hind the bumt-out buildings. There are several of these camps out in the muddy stretch there to the left. The nicest buildings in the city are the Federal Court House and the City Hall which also holds the jail the Na-tional Guard headquarters, and some funeral establish-ments. There are a few nice houses and a couple of high-rise homes for senior citizens. One of the nicest buildings is the whorehouse. Theres also a branch of the University of Southern Illinois, but it no longer offers classes; its a social welfare complex now. The chemical plants do not pay taxes here. They have created small incorporated towns which are self-governed and exempt therefore from supervision by health agencies in East St. Louis. Aluminum Ore created a separate town called Alorton. Monsanto, Cerro Copper and Big River Zinc are all in Sauget. National Stock Yards has its own incorporated town as well. Basically theres no one living in some of these so-called towns. Alorton is a sizable town. Sauget, on the other hand, isnt much more than a legal fiction. It provides tax shelter and immunity from jurisdiction of authorities in East St. Louis. The town of Sauget claims a population of about 200 people. Its major industries, other than Monsanto and the other plants are topless joints owned by the mayor of Sauget, whose last name is Sauget, and an outlet for the lottery. Two of the largest strip clubs face each other on a side street that is perpendicular to the main highway. One is named Oz and that is for white people. The other strip club, which is known as Wiz, is for black people. The lottery office, which is frequented primarily by black people, is the largest in the state of Illinois. The lottery advertises mostly in black publications, Ahmed says. So people who have nothing to start with waste their money on a place that sells them dreams. Lottery proceeds in Illinois allegedly go into education; in reality they go into state revenues and they add nothing to the education fund. So it is a total loss. Affluent people do not play the lottery. The state is in the business here of selling hopes to people who have none. The city itself is full of bars and liquor stores and lots of ads for cigarettes that feature pictures of black people. Assemble all the worst things in America gambling, liquor, cigarettes and toxic fumes, sewage, waste disposal, prostitution put it all together. Then you dump it on black people. East St. Louis begins at the Monsanto fence. Rain starts falling as we cross the railroad tracks, and then another set of tracks, and pass a series of dirt streets with houses that are mostly burnt-out shells, the lots between them piled with garbage bags and thousands of abandoned auto tires. The city is almost totally fiat and lies below the Mississippis flood- line, protected by a levee. In 1986 a floodgate broke and filled part of the city. Houses on Bond Avenue filled up with sewage to their second floors. The waste water emitted from the sewage plant, according to a recent Greenpeace study, varies in color from yellow-orange to green. The toxic substances that it contains become embedded in the soil and the marshland in which children play. Dead Creek, for example, a creek bed that received discharges from the chemical and metal plants in pre-vious years, is now a place where kids from East St. Louis ride their bikes. The creek, which smokes by day and glows on moonless nights, has gained some notoriety in recent years for instances of spontaneous combustion. The Illinois EPA believes that the combustion starts when children ride their bikes across the creek bed, creating friction which begins the smoldering process. Nobody in East St. Louis, Ahmed says, has ever had the clout to raise a protest. Why Americans permit this is so hard for somebody like me, who grew up in the real Third World, to understand…
Im from India. In Calcutta this would be explicable, perhaps. I keep thinking to myself, My God! This is the United States! By midnight, hardly anyone is out on foot. In block after block, there is no sense of life. Only the bars and liquor stores are open but the windows of the liquor stores are barred. There is a Woolworths store that has no windows. Silently in the persistent rain a dark shape looms before us and cuts off the street: a freight train loaded with chemicals or copper, moving slowly to the north. There is no right or wrong side of the tracks in East St. Louis. The tracks are everywhere. Behind us still: the eerie specter of the lights and girders of Monsanto. In front of us, perhaps two miles away: the beautiful St. Louis Arch and, under it, the brightly lighted skyline of St. Louis. The ultimate terror for white people, Ahmed says, is to leave the highway by mistake and find themselves in East St. Louis. People speak of getting lost in East St. Louis as a nightmare. The nightmare to me is that they never leave that highway so they never know what life is like for all the children here. They ought to get off that highway. The nightmare isnt in their heads. Its a real place. There are children living here. Jesse Jackson came to speak at East St. Louis High. There were three thousand people packed into the gym. He was nearly two hours late. When he came in, the feeling was electric. There was pin-drop silence while he spoke. An old man sat beside me, leaning forward on his cane. He never said a word but he was crying. You would think, with all the chemical and metals plants, that there would be unlimited employment. It doesnt work that way. Most of these are specialized jobs. East St. Louis men dont have the education. I go into the Monsanto plant and almost every face I see is white. The biggest employer, in the town is public education. Next, perhaps, the Pfizer plant, which is situated just behind one of the high schools. After that, the biggest businesses may be the drug trade, funerals and bars and prostitution. The mayors family owns the largest funeral home in East St. Louis. The Catholic high school was shut down last year. Theres talk of turning it into a prison. There is a pornography theater in the center of the town but no theater showing movies suitable for children. East St. Louis is the largest city south of Springfield in the state of Illinois but was left off the Illinois map four years ago. The telephone directory that serves the region does not list phone numbers of the residents or businesses of East St. Louis, even though the city lies right at the center of the service area that the directory is supposed to cover. Two years ago, the one pedestrian bridge across the Mississippi River to St. Louis was closed off to East St. Louis residents. Its a third bridge, smaller than the others, Ahmed says, very old the only one thats open to pedestrians. It puts you right into downtown St. Louis, quite close to the Arch. The closing of the bridge was ordered on the day before a street fair that takes place each summer during the July Lourth celebration. Three or four million people flood into the city. There are booths for food, and rides and music. For people in East St. Louis, its an opportunity to bring their children to the city and relax. Mothers walk their kids across the bridge…
The police announced that they were shutting down the bridge. The reason they gave was that there had been some muggings in the past. They were concerned, they said, that teenage blacks would mug the people at the fair, then run across the bridge and disappear into the streets of East St. Louis. Regardless of the reason, it was a decision that denied the folks in East St. Louis access to the fair. According to a story published later in Life magazine, black leaders in East St. Louis said it looked suspiciously like a racist action. The fact that it was pegged to Independence Day intensified the sense of injury. The president of the NAACP in East St. Louis said, We seem to have been isolated. … The bridge was later opened by court order. In recent years, says Ahmed, letters have been going out to people who have homes in a half-mile zone next to Monsanto. The letters offer to buy your home, no questions asked, for cash: $4,000 flat for any house. The speculation is that Monsanto wants a buffer zone to fend off further suits for damages from chemical emissions. These offers are appealing to poor people who have nothing and who have no faith the courts would ever honor their concerns. . . . The land between the two main bridges and along the river is regarded as prime real estate by white developers. Given the fantastic view of the St. Louis skyline and the Gate-way Arch, the land would be immensely valuable if its black residents could be removed. When people ask, What should we do with East St. Louis? they dont speak about the people. They are speaking of the land. Emerging from another rutted street of houses that do not appear to be inhabited, but from the interior of which some lights are seen, we pass the segregated topless joints again and slop the car along Monsanto Avenue to scrutinize Big River Zinc, Orro Copper (Americans Largest Recycler of Copper, according to its sign) and the Monsanto plant. Then, making a U-tum, we head west onto the access road that climbs back to the bridge across the Mississippi. Every time I cross that bridge I feel that I am getting off a plane within a different country, Ahmed says. From the St. Louis side, one sees the dark breadth of the river, another wider strip of blackness where the dwellings of East St. Louis lie, and the glowing cluster of industrial illumination slightly to the south. Off to the east lie the Illinois Bluffs, far above the chemical pollutants. East St. Louis which the local press refers to as an inner city without an outer city has some of the sickest children in America. Of 66 cities in Illinois, East St. Louis ranks first in fetal death, first in premature birth, and third in infant death. Among the negative factors listed by the citys health director are the sewage running in the streets, air that has been fouled by the local plants, the high lead levels noted in the soil, poverty, lack of education, crime, dilapidated housing, insufficient health care, unemployment. Hospital care is deficient too. There is no place to have a baby in East St. Louis. The maternity ward at the citys Catholic hospital, a 100-year-old structure, was shut down some years ago. The only other hospital in town was forced by lack of funds to close in 1990. The closest obstetrics service open to the women here is seven miles away. The infant death rate is still rising. As in New York Citys poorest neighborhoods, dental problems also plague the children here. Although dental problems dont command the instant fears associated with low birch weight, fetal death or cholera, they do have the consequence of wearing down the stamina of children and defeating their ambitions. Bleeding gums, impacted teeth and rotting teeth are routine matters for the children I have interviewed in the South Bronx. Children get used to feeling constant pain. They go to sleep with it. They go to school with it. Sometimes their teachers are alarmed and try to get them to a clinic. But its all so slow and heavily encumbered with red tape and waiting lists and missing, lost or canceled welfare cards, that dental care is often long delayed. Children live for months with pain that grown-ups would find unendurable. The gradual attrition of accepted pain erodes their energy and aspiration. I have seen children in New York with teeth that look like brownish, broken sticks. I have also seen teenagers who were missing half their teeth. But, to me, most shocking is to see a child with an abscess that has been inflamed for weeks and that he has simply lived with and accepts as part of the routine of life. Many teachers in the urban schools have seen this. It is almost commonplace. Compounding these problems is the poor nutrition of the children here average daily food expenditure in East St. Louis is $2.40 for one child and the under immunization of young children. Of every 100 children recently surveyed in East St. Louis, 55 were incompletely immunized for polio, diphtheria, measles and whooping cough. In this context, health officials look with all the more uneasiness at those lagoons of sewage outside public housing. On top of all else is the very high risk of death by homicide in East St. Louis. In a recent year in which three cities in the state of roughly the same size as East St. Louis had an average of four homicides apiece, there were 54 homicides in East St. Louis. But it is the heat of summer that officials here particularly dread. The heat that breeds the insects bearing polio or hepatitis in raw sewage also heightens asthma and frustration and reduces patience. The heat, says a man in public housing can bring out the beast…”
The fear of violence is very real in East St. Louis. The CEO of one of the large companies out on the edge of town has developed an evacuation plan for his employees. State troopers are routinely sent to East St. Louis to put down disturbances that the police cannot control. If the misery of this community explodes someday in a real riot (it has happened in the past), residents believe that state and federal law-enforcement agencies will have no hesitation in applying massive force to keep the violence contained. As we have seen, it is believed by people here that white developers regard the land beside the river and adjacent sections of the city as particularly attractive sites for condominiums and luxury hotels. It is the fear of violence, people believe, and the proximity of the black population that have, up to now, prevented plans like these from taking shape. Some residents are convinced, therefore, that they will some-day be displaced. Its happened in other cities, says a social worker who has lived here for ten years. East St. Louis is a good location, after all. This eventuality, however, is not viewed as very likely or not for a long, long time. The soil would have to be de-leaded first. The mercury and arsenic would have to be dealt with. The chemical plants would have to be shut down or modified before the area could be regarded as attractive to developers. For now, the people of East St. Louis probably can rest assured that nobody much covets what is theirs. The history of East St. Louis, says the Post-Dispatch, is rife with greed and lust and bigotry. At the turn of the century, the city was the second largest railroad center in the nation. It led the nation in sale of horses, mules and hogs, and in the manufacture of aluminum. Meat-packing, steel, and paint manufacture were important here as well. Vir-tually all these industries were owned, however, by outsiders. Blacks were drawn to East St. Louis from the South by promises of jobs. When they arrived, the corporations used them as strikebreakers. In 1917 a mounting white resent-ment of strikebreaking blacks, combined with racial bigotry, ignited one of the most bloody riots in the nations history. White mobs tore into black neighborhoods. Beatings and hangings took place in the streets. The mob, whose rage was indiscriminate, killed a 14-year-old boy and scalped his mother. Before it was over, 244 buildings were destroyed. It may be said that the unregulated private market did not serve the city well. By the 1930s, industries that had enticed black people here with promises of jobs began to leave for areas where even cheaper labor could be found. Proximity to coal, which had attracted industry into the area, also ceased to be important as electric power came to be commercially available in other regions. The Aluminum Ore Company, which had brought 10,000 blacks to East St. Louis to destroy the unions, now shut down and moved to the Deep South. During the Depression, other factories their operations obsolete shut down as well. The city underwent a renaissance of sorts in World War II, when deserted factory space was used for military manufacturing. Cheap black labor was again required. Prostitution also flourished as a market answer to the presence of so many military men at nearby bases. Organized crime set up headquarters in the city. For subsequent decades. East St. Louis was the place where young white men would go for sexual adventures. Population peaked in 1945 at 80,000, one third being black. By 1971, with the population down to 50,000, less than one-third white, a black mayor was elected. A second black mayor, elected in 1979, remained in office until 1991. The problems of the stree
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