4: District Responds to Brown With Prompt but Paltry Action, 1954-1964

As the Black population increased in the city of St. Louis, the enrollment of Black elementary school-age students increased, and the Board spent millions of dollars to construct school buildings in the expanding residential areas where the Whites’ community interests worked in concert to contain Blacks’ residential options (Gordon, 2008). Between 1950 and 1954, the Board constructed several branch school buildings in the Black residential areas in an attempt to address the continuing need for classroom space for Black elementary students even though classroom space existed in schools in the White residential areas of the school district. Despite the construction projects in the early 1950s, the SLPS district faced a shortage of elementary school facilities in the Black residential areas as it approached 1960.