Vivian Gibson, author of The Last Children of Mill Creek, shared her memories of growing up in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood named Mill Creek with the LWVMO DEI book club on Feb. 26.
Developers courted the League of Women Voters as early as 1948 to support urban renewal in St. Louis but failed for lack of a plan to find housing for the many Black families who rented from white slumlords. The city moved ahead with the plan 10 years later after the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex was built. The new Interstate took a sliver of the 465 acres that were demolished, displacing 20,000 Black residents. Learn more at https://www.vivian-gibson.com/.
For the next meeting at 4pm on April 23, we encourage members to read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. League members previously read Braiding Sweetgrass – Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGee, and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl.
