A community organization that preserves the Ville neighborhood’s legacy is bringing a storytelling docent training program to the community to help people learn and share St. Louis’ Black history.
4theVille’s docent training program will expand its offerings from five to seven tours across the city, with two new docents joining the established team of memory tellers. The program is grant-funded through the Deaconess Foundation, University of Missouri-St. Louis’ Public History program, St. Louis Development Corporation and Forward Through Ferguson.
The people who contributed to St. Louis’ rich Black history often go unnoticed, but the docent training program prioritizes that history, which helps restore the community, said Aaron Williams, president of 4theVille.
“St Louis does a bad job of celebrating the contributions of the Black community to its regional culture,” Williams said. “As a person that is very well traveled — been to around 45 countries — I've seen the power of tourism, and coming back to St Louis, I always wondered why St Louis, specifically for the Black community, didn't leverage that tool.”
The organization provides tours through the Missouri History Museum about the story of Black St. Louis through the lens of resistance and resilience, education, health care and music. It will offer two new tours about the history of Black wealth in the city, as well as a walking tour that highlights Black St. Louis’ connection to the Gateway Arch mall downtown. The docents will also serve as tour guides for the Missouri History Museum’s latest exhibit about Mill Creek Valley.
Williams said the docent training program helps meet the demand from people requesting to learn more about the area’s Black history and its culture, and it allows them to have a greater impact on the region.
During the six-month program, trainees work with local historians to better understand the impact of Black stories and learn how to best share these narratives. They also learn facilitation and community organizing skills. The goal is to celebrate the history and leverage it to bring more revenue to the area’s Black communities.
“How many times have we seen history extracted from a place to benefit someone else or something else?” he said. “We want to reclaim that economic value, understanding that these stories and these memories come from communities that are in the present day, distressed and under invested and … that value can be reclaimed, and it can be spent to actually transform these communities.”
Brittany Raji Alberty has always wanted to learn more Black history in school and through the community. The 35-year-old said she would not have received much of her knowledge if it were not for documentaries on her local public broadcasting channel and college.
“I think one of my first courses in college was African American history, and it is when I heard the story about Nat Turner … my teacher was so passionate … and I just knew that this was something that I wanted to do, but I just didn't know how,” Alberty said.
Although Alberty’s ancestors lived in north St. Louis, she said she did not hear many of the enriching stories she learned until she came through the docent training program.
“I feel like my life would have been different. I would have had a different reverence for our city and love,” she said. “It just really gave me a new sense of pride and reconciliation and a new level of grief as well with this program.”
Alberty, who also leads an empowerment organization for mothers, said she is excited to share that knowledge through tourism, especially now, since the federal government is enacting orders to erase and minimize Black contributions to society across the country.
“If we don't know what's happening, we don't know how to prepare for the future,” she said. “I think it [history] could also solve a lot of the issues that we're having, not only with race relations.”
Over the years, Tee Parks has become an advocate for Black culture and history because she was not always fully versed in St. Louis’ Black history. She became a memory teller through the docent program to hold memories and bridge the gap between the past and the present.
It is really about learning that there is much more to Black life in St. Louis than we have been taught, Parks said.
“There were tools left behind from stories and lives and legacies that are still very prevalent to this day,” Parks, 36, said. “When we understand that we are just a reflection of who our people were back then and how we're still doing the same thing, I think it'll bring a little bit more enrichment to our lives, to our communities, and more than anything, holding ourselves to a higher standard than what we have been told.”
Often, Parks, who is also an on-air talent for 96.3 W-FUN, has heard that many Black St. Louis neighborhoods were slums or violent, but by sifting through archives, she found that this was not always the case. But she said that is where she comes in as a memory teller, to share the truths and unspoken history about Black life.
“Our responsibility as memory tellers is just making sure that we're sticking to facts and history and trying to steer away from personal feelings or experience … and then when it comes down to it, systemically, we have facts for days,” Parks said. “It's a conversation that is really going to promote change.”
4theVille will open applications for its second cohort in the spring.
