The Material World of Modern Segregation

And yet, the most-segregated domain of St. Louis life remains that of its racialized private or semi-private worlds (by “semi-private,” we mean private for some purposes, public for others)––the politics of what is lived, debated, and enacted behind closed doors, at dinner tables, in bedrooms, not to mention inside corporate and institutional boardrooms and clubrooms.

With these issues in mind, essays in MWMS Volume II will investigate the historical “double erasure” of the material sites of Black private life––sites doubly invisible in that they were hidden from white/public consciousness at the times(s) of their robust existence, and to some degree remain so now, having been lost to the region’s collective memory. Together, they will offer answers to this pressing question: How have Black St. Louisans engaged and resisted such incursions, and negotiated their own politics of private space?