Thanks to Donald John Trump and JD Vance, America, a nation born of immigration is showing its ugly side as far as recent immigration is concerned. Springfield, Ohio is not the only old line industrial Midwest city seeing an influx of new immigrants who have not only revived the local economy but have also reversed long running population decline.
Even before the Lewis and Clark expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson pushed off on their journey into the vast unknown from present day Wood River, Illinois(just across the Mississippi from downtown), the city of St. Louis was the largest settlement west of the Mississippi. Kansas City, Denver, all the way to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, etc; did not exist. St. Louis’ prominent location at the great confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers would ensure its burgeoning growth as a major center of riverine transportation, boat building, mining, manufacturing and education. At one time there were 10 medical schools in the city. Doc Adams of “Gun Smoke” TV Westerns fame supposedly had his medical training in St. Louis.
The first World Fair was held in 1904 in St. Louis. The then super prosperous city could afford to build the largest park in the United States to host the fair. The multi-million dollar palatial homes built by the rich to accommodate their guests to the fair still stand in the upscale Central West End neighborhood around the park. Forest Park is still the largest urban park in the United States. Sadly it was also in this high end neighborhood that on June 28, 2020, during the George Floyd protests in St. Louis, the Trumpist couple Patricia and Mark McCloskey, pointed guns and yelled at protesters.
St. Louis’ location also made it a critical military base. Jefferson Barracks, still extant and overlooking shipping traffic on the Mississippi, was the post West Point assignment for historic figures like President Ulysses S. Grant and his friend Confederate General James Longstreet. To this day whenever I drive through Grantwood village, I think of what would have happened to American history if Grant had drowned, as he nearly did, in a rain swollen Gravois Creek after a night of courting his beloved Julia. One of the the first major war decisions President Lincoln made was to secure the federal arsenal at St. Louis. Arsenal Street in South St. Louis is still a major thoroughfare. The Union Force under General Nathaniel Lyon, tasked by President Lincoln with ensuring that Missouri, then a border state with southern confederate sympathies, stayed in the union was based in St. Louis. Post civil war, many of the war’s luminaries made their home in St. Louis. Grant married a St. Louis woman, Sherman, among others lived and is buried here.
Finish-American architect, Eero Saarinen, in his homage to the city’s role in the westward expansion of the United States, designed and built The Gateway Arch on the banks of the Mississippi in downtown St. Louis:
the 630-foot-tall monument in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch, it is the world's tallest arch and Missouri's tallest accessible structure. (Wikipedia)
But recent decades have seen this once booming city fall into decline and weighed down by a seemingly intractable rate of depopulation. Underlying it all has always been the issue of “race”. The green domed old court house in the above caption photo is where the infamous Dred Scott case was first litigated. St. Louis still struggles with this issue. Many observers credit racial balkanization … “the northside/southside divide” as one of the major factors in the city’s declining fortunes. The city still boasts several immigrant ethnic enclaves .. Dutchtown(actually the German Deutsch), Irish Dogtown(fantastic pubs and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations), the African-American North side and the culinary bastion of the region known as the Hill is still predominantly Italian. The1950 U.S. National Team which defeated England 1-0 in Brazil to win what was considered, at the time, to be the biggest upset in U.S. Soccer history, the World Cup, boasted 5 players from the Hill. Baseball greats Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola were born and raised on the Hill. St. Louisans famously still ask people they meet for the first time where they went to school. The answer to that question serves as a tell of one’s background.
The St. Louis metro region at large is actually growing. The suburbs and exurbs are booming .. with many of the folks having left the inner core of the city. But there’s a reversal of this trend underway. Many young professionals, including two of my own, are moving into the city and re-vitalizing once moribund neighborhoods. Recent influx of immigrants, starting with refugees from the wars in Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia and recent arrivals from Central and South America have reversed the city’s population decline and given it a more eclectic flava. STL Magazine online reports that:
St. Louis region notches big increase in immigrant population
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Saint Louis University sociology professor Ness Sandoval has been sounding the alarm for a few years now about how St. Louis needs to attract more immigrants to combat stagnant regional growth. So he was overjoyed by a new set of Census numbers showing the St. Louis metro area’s foreign-born population jumped 23 percent from 2022 to 2023, what he says is the largest one-year increase since at least 1900. I think this is a historical milestone for the region, he says.
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Trump and his minions may delight in demonizing immigrants but out here on the Missouri banks of the “Mighty Sip”(Mississippi river) we are delighted to welcome them. We would even like to see more of them call the STL home. An island of Blue and a city of immigrants, in an otherwise ruby red state, still believes in:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
---Writing on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, NY
E pluribus unum
