Certain cities in the United States have developed a claim to fame for representing some vital aspect of America. New York City has often been hailed as its financial and cultural capital. Chicago, the “big shoulders” of the nation, has been depicted as its boisterous center of industry. Berkeley, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., serve as symbols of American liberalism, and Atlanta as the political and economic capital of Black America.
According to historian and native son Walter Johnson, St. Louis can serve as a symbol of US imperial expansion and racial formation, a “crucible of American history…[at] the juncture of empire and anti-Blackness.” Throughout its existence, Johnson argues, St. Louis has been a microcosm of America’s long-standing compulsion to subvert its own high ideals for the sake of white supremacy and imperialism. But as Johnson shows, the story of St. Louis is not just one of catastrophe; it is also one of constant resistance to the worst in American history, led by men and women spurred to dream of a better nation. It has been a site for movements of radical hope and resistance to class injustice. St. Louis is where workers established a commune in 1877 that rivaled the one in Paris, and where organized Black working-class men and women inspired people like the historian C. L. R. James and the journalist Claudia Jones to draw lessons from them.
In his new book, The Broken Heart of America, Johnson sets out to convey this twin narrative—of empire-building and racism and of the people seeking to end those evils and remake the country into a genuine democracy—through St. Louis’s incredible history. The city has been at the forefront of American conquest and at the center of American race relations, serving as both a military base and an industrial powerhouse. At the same time, it has often been an arena for those seeking to resist America’s usual predilections for empire and racism. American communism, Black nationalism, the civil rights movement, and Black Lives Matter all found in St. Louis a critical fulcrum on which American history turned, morphed, and redefined itself. The Gateway to the West, as Johnson shows, is also a gateway to understanding America’s violent, unpredictable, and yet sometimes hopeful past.