Freeman Bosley Sr., St. Louis alderman for decades and head of political family, dies at 90

Freeman Bosley Sr., one of St. Louis’ longest-serving aldermen, father of the city’s first Black mayor and an officeholder known for his political antics as well as his legislating, has died. He was 90.

Bosley became a north side alderman in 1977. He ran and won 10 times, keeping the city’s old 3rd Ward in his hands for a total of 40 years.

He had been out of elected office for less than a decade when he died of undisclosed causes on Friday. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Bosley entered politics in the early 1970s, when he ran for 3rd Ward committeeman and lost. He attributed the loss to a political double-cross. He quickly rebounded and was elected the ward’s committeeman in 1974. Three years later, he was elected to the Board of Aldermen.

In 1985, he ran for the Democratic mayoral nomination against Vincent Schoemehl Jr. After suffering a stinging defeat in the primary, Bosley tried unsuccessfully to retain his aldermanic seat in the general election by mounting a third-party, write-in effort.

Ironically, his opponent was Stephanie Donaldson. The Democratic nominee had been Bosley’s office manager for his mayoral campaign and had quit to run for his vacated aldermanic seat.

Bosley sought his old seat again in 1989 and won handily. He would never lose another race.

Not everyone lauded his election.

In 1990, Circuit Attorney George Peach told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he wasn’t sure “the Bosleys could win an election honestly.''

Bosley called Peach’s remarks “highly unethical”; Peach responded by calling Bosley “a public fool.”

It was Peach who later went to prison for misusing city funds.

The 3rd Ward encompassed some of St. Louis’ most historic neighborhoods, whose grandeur had faded by the time Bosley took office. White and middle-class Black residents had fled to the suburbs.

In this environment, Bosley was dealing with the routine workings of a big city: taxes and towing, street cleanings and closings, zoning and parking, crime and policing. Infrastructure was a particular focus for him.

In the 3rd Ward, crime and infrastructure went hand-in-hand.

For builders all over the nation, red St. Louis brick is like gold bullion.

"If you own a building and you leave it vacant, the brick thieves will come and steal the brick,” Bosley told the Post-Dispatch in 2011.

It was a long-standing problem in Bosley’s ward. When the brick didn’t fall from neglect, thieves often helped it along by ramming buildings with a small tractor.

Bosley treated each crumbling building like a precious jewel and was loath to subject any of them to the wrecking ball. In 2018, when he heard a wrecking crew, there was nothing he could do about it: The order came from his son, Brandon Bosley, who succeeded his father as 3rd Ward alderman.

Brandon Bosley failed to reach the general election in 2023, losing in the primary to Alderman Rasheen Aldridge in what is now the 14th Ward. Aldridge sent his condolences Friday to the family on social media.

Since 2010, much of the stolen brick came from properties owned by developer Paul McKee. Bosley was a reluctant signatory to McKee’s project, once calling it a “pipe dream.”

His reluctance was well-founded. McKee's NorthSide Regeneration project was riddled with financial troubles. McKee later settled a lawsuit that accused NorthSide of tax credit fraud.

Bosley fought equally long and hard to rid public places of smoke.

“All of us need to breathe, but I don't think any of us need to smoke to live,” the Post-Dispatch reported Bosley saying in 1990 as he ramped up his anti-smoking campaign.

He began his crusade with meeting rooms in City Hall. In 2002, Bosley introduced a bill that would ban smoking in all areas of buildings owned or leased by the city.

"If you need to smoke, you can go the hell outside," he declared.

Bosley had tried to get a similar bill passed 10 years earlier, but at that time, nearly half of the 28 board members smoked, and they were having none of it. By 2003, the number of smokers on the Board of Aldermen had dwindled, and the smoking ban in city buildings passed.

"This has been a long time coming," Bosley said.

Bosley also worked to prohibit the sale and distribution of tobacco products to children and to move billboard advertising of tobacco products away from schools and parks.

"When more children recognize Joe Camel than they do Martin Luther King, there's something wrong with that," Bosley told the Post-Dispatch in 1998.

That same year, Bosley sponsored a resolution calling for the firing of the police officers who severely beat Gregory Bell, a mentally challenged young Black man who accidentally triggered his home’s burglar alarm. The officers went free, and the resolution failed, mostly along racial lines.

Bosley never hesitated to take an unpopular stance and never shunned the limelight.

Sometimes antics garnered him attention. He was well aware of his reputation, once noting, “I do realize that I’m a walking news story.”

In 1979, he went on a 40-day hunger strike to protest the closure of Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the public hospital in the Ville neighborhood.

Many were startled by the way he demonstrated his opposition to proposed school closings in 2003. The closings were orchestrated by a private management firm hired by the St. Louis School Board to rescue the financially failing school district.

Protesters gathered in front of district headquarters downtown, some carrying two small white caskets with children in them. One of the children was LaKeySha Bosley, the alderman’s 10-year-old daughter.

Bosley once proposed public caning to punish young graffiti artists. He said many youngsters didn’t get enough discipline at home.

In 2013, Bosley created a firestorm in soliciting the public’s help to send his daughter to St. Xavier University. He then told the Post-Dispatch, which broke the story, that he would return the money since the newspaper “made such a stink of it.”

Freeman R. Bosley Sr. was born in 1934 in St. Louis, one of eight children of Alma J. Bosley and Preston T. Bosley, a chief railway mail clerk for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

He and his wife, Marjorie Ellen Robertson Bosley, graduated from Sumner High School and married in 1953. She died in 2009. They had two children, Freeman R. Bosley Jr. and Pamela Bosley Byes.

Bosley was the father of four other children, LaKeySha Bosley, Brandon Bosley, Aloha Mischeaux and Kenya Young-Bosley. LaKeySha Bosley is a Missouri state representative.

In a statement announcing his death, LaKeysha Bosley called her father a “dedicated elected official” and “a pillar of strength, compassion and wisdom whose impact extended far beyond the ward he served.”

In a Bosley biography in the book “Lift Every Voice and Sing: St. Louis African Americans in the Twentieth Century,” he said his father had been an electronics engineer who worked at Carson Union May Stern, Union Electric (now Ameren) and McDonnell Aircraft (now Boeing). For a time, he said, his father owned Bosley Radio and TV and a record shop.

The usually verbose alderman spoke briefly when he was honored in 2017 for his long service to the city.

“I just want to thank my family, my son, and everybody who’s been with me that has made a difference in my life,” Bosley said. “I could go on and on and on, but I’m not going to do that. I just want to say thank you so very much for what you’ve done for me.”