Damn Donbrown, The Nashville inter city experience was a lot different from yours. We lived out, but got bussed in. Segregation court ruling.
I remember most of the Blacks had never been around whites, the school was almost 50/50, which was in the projects. It was a scary place. People always running down the street, being chased, or chasing someone. Gun battles out in front of the school. Teachers yelling at us to get down. Some drug dealer running through the school, running from the cops. They seemed to really like nickel plated 45's back then. The police were always near. They were not there to protect us, they were there to make sure that nothing happened to the white kids, because their families would have started a war. Lots of tension over the bussing. Actually, some of my best friends were from the projects. I got along with them better than the other white kids.
In highschool, when we grew up and they got bussed out to the suburbs, things got worse. Race fights, groups shaking down loners for pocket change. They weren't so nice. Then I noticed the kids started carrying guns.
Louis Farikan and the Black Panthers bought homes in WASP neighborhoods and moved in groups of people noone wanted to live with.
The town I grew up in had over 80,000 people in the 60's - 70's. Today it is under 30,000.
I would not be alive if it wasn't for a few black guys and girls. Most just watched, some were hateful few had mercy. But I must say this event brings back memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_St._Louis#The_East_St._Louis_riots_of_1917
East St. Louis was named an All-America City in 1959, having retained prosperity through the decade as its population reached a peak of 82,295 residents. Through the 1950s and later, the city's musicians were an integral creative force in blues, rock and roll and jazz. Some left and achieved national recognition, like Ike and Tina Turner. Many were featured on the PBS series River of Song in 1999, covering music of cities along the Mississippi River.
The city was dramatically affected by mid-century deindustrialization and restructuring. As a number of local factories began to close because of changes in industry, the railroad and meatpacking industries also were cutting back and moving jobs out of the region. This led to a precipitous loss of working and middle-class jobs. The city's financial conditions deteriorated. Elected in 1951, Mayor Alvin Fields resorted to ill-judged funding procedures to try to buy the city out of its financial morass. The scheme increased the city's bonded indebtedness and the property tax rate. More businesses closed as workers left the area to seek jobs in other regions. Crime increased as a result of poverty and lack of opportunities. The city is also left with expensive clean-up of brownfields, areas with environmental contamination by heavy industry that makes redevelopment more difficult.
Street gangs such as the War Lords, Black Egyptians, 29th Street Stompers and Hustlers appeared in inner neighborhoods. Like other cities with endemic problems by the 1960s, East St. Louis suffered riots in the latter part of the decade. In September 1967, rioting occurred in the city's South End. Also, in the summer of 1968, a still-unsolved series of sniping attacks took place. These events contributed to residential mistrust and adversely affected the downtown retail base and the city's income.
Construction of freeways and urban sprawl contributed to East St. Louis' decline as well. The freeways cut through and broke up existing neighborhoods and community networks. The freeways also made it easier for residents to commute back and forth from suburban homes, so more were inclined to move to newer housing. East St. Louis adopted a number of programs to try to reverse decline — the Model Cities program, the Concentrated Employment Program and Operation Breakthrough. The programs were not enough to offset the industrial restructuring.
In 1971, James Williams was elected as the city's first black mayor. Faced with overwhelming economic problems, he was unable to stop the city's decline and depopulation.[citation needed] By the election of Carl Officer as mayor (the youngest in the country at that time at age 25) in 1979, many said the city had nowhere to go but up, yet things grew worse. Middle-class whites and African Americans left the city. People who could get jobs simply went to where there was work and decent quality of life. Because the city had to cut back on maintenance, sewers failed and garbage pickup ceased. Police cars often did not work, and neither did their radios. The East St. Louis Fire Department went on strike in the 1970s.
Before Gordon Bush was elected mayor in 1991, the state imposed a financial advisory board to manage the city in exchange for a financial bailout. State legislative approval in 1990 of riverboat gambling and the installation of the Casino Queen riverboat casino provided the first new source of income for the city in nearly 30 years.
The past decade can be characterized as one of redevelopment and renewal.[citation needed] In 2001 the city completed a new library. It also built a new city hall. Public-private partnerships have resulted in a variety of new retail developments, housing initiatives, and the St. Louis Metrolink light rail, which have sparked renewal.
The city, now small in terms of population, is still one of the prime examples of drastic urban blight in the country. Sections of "urban prairie" can be found where vacant buildings were torn down and whole blocks became overgrown with vegetation. Additionally, white people have massively moved away from the city, a phenomenon known as White Flight that has affected the whole of Greater St. Louis, including St. Louis proper and Metro-East, among other big cities of the United States.
