ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Library director Kristen Sorth thinks the book is so important to understanding the region’s history that she asked all of her top staff members to read it.
Written by University of Iowa historian Colin Gordon in 2008, the book examines the roots of the decline of population in ºüÀêÊÓƵ over the past several decades, from its height as a booming metropolis to its status as a struggling Rust Belt city suffering from decades of white flight to the suburbs.
Since , when protests in Ferguson thrust north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County and its patchwork of small municipalities into the national spotlight, Gordon’s book has become the go-to source for reporters and scholars all over the country in trying to understand the racial divide and also the strange government fractionalization that defines ºüÀêÊÓƵ County.
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On Monday, Gordon was the star witness at the first day of a trial in U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel’s courtroom in the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse. was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Missouri NAACP against the Ferguson-Florissant School District in North County. The ACLU argues that by electing its board members at large rather than by district or ward, the school district disenfranchises its African-American residents from the political process, in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Of the school district’s seven board members, five are white, even though 80 percent of the district’s student population is black. The racial makeup of the board became an issue after the suspension and later resignation of its African-American superintendent, Art McCoy.
Referring to the “long shadow of discrimination,†Gordon testified Monday afternoon that the historic pattern of development in North County that segregates blacks in certain areas of highly concentrated multifamily housing contributes to their general disenfranchisement from the political process.
There is a massive gap in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, he said, between poverty in the southern part of the district where most black students live, and the other parts of the district, where most white students live.
“The gap reflects sustained patterns of discrimination,†Gordon testified under direct examination.
Whether or not his testimony helps make the ACLU’s case that school board elections exacerbate that discrimination, his thoughts, and, indeed, the trial, shed a light on the new understanding in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region that our division, by race and by poverty, is not an asset but an albatross.
One exchange between school district attorney Cindy Ormsby and Gordon during her cross-examination highlights the issue of fractionalized government that is unavoidable in a county with 90 municipalities and 23 school districts.
In a report on the district that Gordon produced for the ACLU, the historian described how the white flight patterns moved first from the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ into the northern suburbs in the county. Blacks became concentrated in various large apartment complexes east of West Florissant Avenue, such as those on Canfield Drive, where Michael Brown was shot on Aug. 9, 2014.
Ormsby pointed out that the Canfield Green Apartments aren’t actually in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. Nor are the Northfield Apartments or some other complexes Gordon mentioned in his report.
That’s not the point, he countered.
Gordon’s contention, in his book and in his report for the lawsuit, is that the development pattern that created the conditions in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County was a direct result of the founding of all the municipalities that, in many cases, had boundaries that were drawn to keep black people out. The seeds of that past discrimination are blooming now.
“I believe those boundaries are highly artificial,†Gordon said.
Indeed, therein lies the great challenge for the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, highlighted in the various reports that have examined our division, from the Department of Justice to the Ferguson Commission.
In denying Canfield Green, Ormsby might be helping her client by casting some doubt on the accuracy of Gordon’s numbers. But she is also inadvertently helping to make an important point about the transient nature of poverty in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County.
Today’s Canfield Green student might be a student at Riverview Gardens or Normandy. But tomorrow? One unpaid utility bill or other calamity could lead to a move just a few blocks away.
And that gets to the heart of the bigger issue — totally separate from the question of how school board members are elected, which is dictated in state law. It’s the question that the Spainhower Commission asked back in 1968. It’s the question being asked by Better Together and other groups talking about the need for unity in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. Why should the Ferguson-Florissant School District and the others in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County each exist, dividing our region into black and white, rich and poor, haves and have nots?
Until the entire region embraces the children of Canfield Green, we all lose.
