Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis

Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century

by Keona K. Ervin

Like most of the nation during the 1930s, St. Louis, Missouri, was caught in the stifling grip of the Great Depression. For the next thirty years, the "Gateway City" continued to experience significant urban decline as its population swelled and the area's industries stagnated. Over these decades, many African American citizens in the region found themselves struggling financially and fighting for access to profitable jobs and suitable working conditions. To combat ingrained racism, crippling levels of poverty, and sub-standard living conditions, black women worked together to form a community-based culture of resistance -- fighting for employment, a living wage, dignity, representation, and political leadership.

Gateway to Equality investigates black working-class women's struggle for economic justice from the rise of New Deal liberalism in the 1930s to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Author Keona K. Ervin explains that the conditions in twentieth-century St. Louis were uniquely conducive to the rise of this movement since the city's economy was based on light industries that employed women, such as textiles and food processing. As part of the Great Migration, black women migrated to the city at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and labor and black freedom movements relied less on a charismatic, male leadership model. This made it possible for women to emerge as visible and influential leaders in both formal and informal capacities.

In this impressive study, Ervin presents a stunning account of the ways in which black working-class women creatively fused racial and economic justice. By illustrating that their politics played an important role in defining urban political agendas, her work sheds light on an unexplored aspect of community activism and illuminates the complexities of the overlapping civil rights and labor movements during the first half of the twentieth century.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2017

Reviews

[Ai Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a really fascinating look, putting Black women and their organizing at the center, which I think really blows apart a lot of thinking around labor organizing and what it has looked like historically. My favorite chapter was the one about youth activism and the 'don't buy where you can't work' movement--just really fascinating stuff, and I think for me was the easiest to follow? (I read this in a less-than-desirable format so that had an impact, unfortunately, in how I was able to approach and understand what was going on--sometimes there were moving pieces I struggled to keep track of, for example.) Definitely usable in teaching, and so necessary in so many ways.

[Ms.Caprioli · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the middle of the pandemic, in one of those zoom webinars I signed up for to keep myself from going crazy, someone recommended this book. I’m so glad they did. It was hard to find not just the time to reas, but the time to read while having the intellectual bandwidth to really engage with historical research, that I approached this as a “one chapter every couple of fiction books.” This book is essential to understand what the phrase “black women saved our democracy” truly means.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of a too-little known topic!

[Craig Scandrett-Leatherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ervin frames the book with two national protests in which black women in St. Louis organized an effective worker strike in 1933 and a renters strike in 1969. Before and between those major successes, Gateway to Equality identifies the backgrounds and passions of about a dozen major female organizers in St. Louis who had national experience and impact. The book highlights major justice work in the twentieth century and the central roles of female St. Louis activists during this time.

Before cell phones and text messages, hundreds of women organized a strike across different plants because their wages were unlivable at $4.60 per week and had been lowered six times. Despite the general conceptual and organizational divide between church and communist perspectives, the women combined insights, organizing and emotions in their leadership. They organized to focus on issues of survival and justice, and to include rather than isolate different perspectives.

Gateway reviews movements where women led in CORE and Southern Tenant Farmers Union; organized strikes for garment workers; organized boycotts and strikes for jobs against a defense contractor, banks, drug stores and neighborhood shops; ran effective campaigns for city and state political positions; created fair housing legislation; wrote reports on Missouri prisons; and organized unions.

In 1969 black working-class women led thousands of public-housing tenants from Pruitt-Igoe, Carr Square, Vaughn and Cochran developments in a strike against St. Louis Housing Authority (SLHA). The substance of their strike was an expression of dignity and a public demand for respect: the public needed to know that working women who made $75 a month in wages could not afford to pay $55 per month to house, feed, clothe and transport themselves and their children. They and their supporters carried signs that read “Sure Fire Riot Control—Lower Rent,” “March Now—Eat Later,” “Make the Roaches Pay Rent Too!” They demanded lower rents, increased representation on housing board commissions, improved maintenance, better pest control and police protection, improved utility services and financial transparency of the SLHA. Their protest was covered by national news, drew from a rich history of organizing by black women, gained almost all of its objectives, and influenced local, state and national housing policies.

Keona Ervin’s Gateway to Equality is important justice history, women’s history, and St. Louis history.