I grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, the first planned commuter suburb built west of the Mississippi River. Originally established as a railroad town west of St. Louis City, today the independent city possesses some of western St. Louis County’s most desirable real estate. My memories of Meacham Park, the Black neighborhood on Kirkwood’s edge, are just that: peripheral.
Locals remember this history as one of inevitable progress, logical development, and Christian charity: a wealthier, white neighborhood annexed a poorer, Black neighborhood and they became “one,” which then extended well-funded public works and services to the lower-income neighborhood. Not only is this account self-serving, but it is also incorrect. Kirkwood and St. Louis County manufactured blight as a pretext for their long-established plans to capture Meacham Park and quite literally turn Black homes into HomeGoods. This is the story of two adjacent neighborhoods and their conflict over annexation, which at its very core is a conflict over belonging.
Founded in 1890, Meacham Park was one of the first suburban neighborhoods settled by Black Americans. Real estate developer Elzey Eugene Meacham sold ten-dollar parcels of undeveloped land, quickly transforming the Missouri marsh into an affordable, inner-ring Black suburb.
While most Black migrants from the rural South relocated to industrial cities during the Great Migration, a significant number of migrants found and built community in suburban networks such as Meacham Park.
Throughout most of the twentieth century, the historic Black suburb represented the only area in St. Louis County where Black people could purchase homes and build businesses. Gertrude Johnson, lifelong resident of Meacham Park, described twentieth-century life in the neighborhood as “self-sufficient,” but the Great Depression hit isolated Black neighborhoods especially hard. Yet incredibly, Bill’s Barber Shop, Moses’ Pool Hall, and other local, Black-owned businesses survived and remained neighborhood anchors.
Meacham Park represented a place where Black Americans could establish businesses and build equity, but due to the nature of racial segregation and discrimination, municipal services in Meacham Park operated with far less funding, oversight, and predictability, compared to the wealthier, white neighborhood of Kirkwood. Meacham Park residents shared a border with Kirkwood but did not share access to its fully funded municipal services, and in 1966 five Black children tragically died in a house fire because their volunteer fire department’s engine failed to start.