Mill Creek: Black Metropolis Exhibit

From its origin at the turn of the 20th century to its destruction in 1959 in the name of urban renewal, Mill Creek Valley was a center for Black life in St. Louis. With a population of nearly 20,000 people and more than 5,000 buildings, Mill Creek was a city within a city, noted for its vibrant commercial life, rich culture, and popular entertainment venues. How is it, then, that almost no trace of Mill Creek remains in St. Louis today? Mill Creek: Black Metropolis explores the rich history of a St. Louis neighborhood that historians have likened to New York’s legendary Harlem. It was the home of St. Louis’s major Black newspapers, the offices of numerous Black professionals, a center of social activism, and the birthplace of ragtime. All this richness thrived amid and despite racial segregation, providing African Americans common ground and the refuge from the daily slights and indignities of a stark color divide in 20th-century St. Louis. This new temporary exhibit at the Missouri History Museum will explore Mill Creek as a Black metropolis, all that made it special, and its untimely and intentional erasure from the St. Louis landscape.