This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 12, 2012 - A new video on the BBC website looks at the St. Louis response to the original Delmar Divide video. The story below discusses that video and the engagement started by the Missouri History Museum and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.
When British Broadcasting Company reporter Franz Strasser began poring over census data looking for cities with persistent segregation, he found several. But St. Louis stood out for its unique division.
“We’ve seen disparities in other cities but they seem to be on opposite sides of the city, and people talk about the ‘good’ part and the ‘bad’ part of town,” Strasser said. “I picked St. Louis because I wasn’t aware of any other place where it’s happening side by side.”
Almost everyone in St. Louis knows which east-west road is said to mark that divide.
“One street happened to run right through the middle,” Strasser said. "And that street happened to be Delmar."
"The Delmar Divide," Strasser’s BBC video, was first published on the BBC website in March, and soon caught the attention of St. Louisans. The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, in conjunction with the Missouri History Museum, contacted 100 community groups to brainstorm issues presented in the video.
This past October, representatives of those groups talked about their ideas at a History Museum gathering. The conversation continued, and this Wednesday night, more discussion will take place at The Pulitzer, along with a screening of the video.
“It’s very gratifying for me to see that there is so much local reaction to it,” Strasser said.
Holding up a mirror (to a small area)
“The Delmar Divide” makes its points through interviews, photos and statistics. The figures, taken from the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau, concern census tracts 1123 and 1124, which represent only a small portion of the city split by Delmar.
Tract 1123, north of Delmar, is bound east and west by Taylor and Kingshighway, and by Page Avenue on the north. Just below, tract 1124, part of the Central West End, is also defined by Kingshighway and Taylor.
Comparing these two specific tracts yields striking differences: South of Delmar, the median home value is $262,000 more; the median income is $32,000 more; and the number of people with bachelor's degrees is 60 percent higher. South of Delmar, the population is 74 percent white; to the north, it’s 98 percent African-American.
This kind of information is hardly surprising to St. Louisans, but local efforts to take action may have resurfaced because the facts were re-packaged by a neutral source, according to the BBC’s Strasser.
“We hold up a mirror and we try to tell Americans something about themselves that maybe they didn’t already know — or maybe they didn’t want to talk about,” Strasser said.
Strasser will appear at the Pulitzer event, along with panelists including the Beacon’s Bob Duffy, the Anti-Defamation League’s project director Tabari Coleman and local artist Ilene Berman, whose NODhouse work, embroidered napkins that hang in businesses on Grand Avenue north of Delmar, is aimed at erasing the Delmar division.
Berman, in an email, applauded the video for bringing attention to the issue.
"One of the issues I have encountered around the Delmar Divide is how entrenched it has become in the fabric of the city," Berman said. "One of the things the video did was [to challenge] that entrenchment."
North St. Louis resident Barbara Martin is also heartened by possibilities created by the video. After retiring in 2006 from 34 years of teaching in the Normandy school district, Martin has become very involved in local politics as chairperson of her area council of wards.
But it's only been since 2008 that she’s seen a renaissance of hope in both local and national politics, something she feels will make it possible to create change in places like north St. Louis.
Martin credits two events for creating a perfect storm. One is the rise of the internet and social media that allowed Strasser’s video to circulate widely. The other is the arrival of Barack Obama on the national political scene, which, in her opinion, sparked a widespread can-do attitude.
"The one thing that stood out were those three little words: 'Yes, we can,’” Martin said. “Before that, I would vote, but I never studied to find out for myself what the issues were,” Martin said.
'Not the only story'
Not everyone is completely enamored of Strasser’s video. In an email, Mayor Francis Slay said "The Delmar Divide" does not paint a complete picture.
"Delmar Boulevard remains a poignant symbol of social division and dysfunction in this community. Pictures of vacant derelict buildings and overgrown vacant lots tell a story. I agree it is important that we learn lessons from that story," Mayor Slay said. "But, it is not the only story."
The mayor pointed to numerous assets, improvements and potential investments in parts of north St. Louis not examined in the video, including: Paul McKee’s Northside Redevelopment, a new Mississippi River bridge, the Four Seasons Hotel, a new recreational complex opening next month, and "thousands of new or renovated apartments and homes," funded by government programs.
It would be a "terrible mistake to ignore the lessons of the Delmar divide," according to Mayor Slay, but,"it also would be a mistake to allow the legacy of the Delmar divide to blind us to positive change and to the growing opportunities that would have been unthinkable as recently as 20 years ago."
Focusing on unity, not divisions, is the goal of The Pulitzer's new initiative, which includes the "Delmar Divide" event, an effort so new, it doesn't even have a name. The evolving series departs significantly from previous Pulitzer programs, according to director of programs Kristin Fleischmann Brewer.
"In the past, we've done a ton of community engagement but it always related back to our exhibitions," Brewer said. "This is one of the first community engagement projects not necessarily having to do with our exhibitions, but with our commitment to Grand Center and what that means, with our location in the city.”
While Strasser's in town, he'll work on a new video, re-interviewing his orginal sources and interviewing new ones. Brewer’s not sure what the Pulitzer's next steps will be. But The Pulitzer initiative goes far beyond either side of Delmar, and extends to communities not defined by geographical boundaries, such as the LGBT population.
"It' not just about about Delmar," Brewer said. "This is about trying to engage the entire city."
