Five years ago, a small Ohio press published a book that would change St. Louis. Belt Publishing released The Last Children of Mill Creek just as COVID-19 shut down the world and canceled its author’s book launch at the Missouri History Museum.
That author, Vivian Gibson, was then 71 years old. She had never written a book before, never even thought about writing a book before. Her memoir came out of a creative writing workshop for seniors, which she joined upon her retirement with the idea that it might be fun. Instead, she wrote a book that is now in its fifth printing, that is taught to classes across the region, and that has led to a public remembrance of, and reckoning with, a neighborhood that was nearly forgotten.
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Mill Creek Valley, where Gibson lived as a young girl, was a community of 20,000 Black residents in the shadow of downtown St. Louis—what is today Midtown. City leaders called it a slum, and used a then-new federal program to demolish it in the name of urban renewal beginning in 1959. Gibson’s family was part of a diaspora of Black families to neighborhoods in North City, and beyond.
As Gibson notes today, the irony is that the “urban renewal” promised for what had been a tightly knit neighborhood never came. What had been dense, Soulard-style housing was razed, to the point that the area was known for a time as “Hiroshima Flats.” Highway construction of what is now I-64 cut through a broad swath of the land, but other areas remain empty.
“There are vacant grassy lots on Olive today where, 70 years later, they’ve never built anything,” Gibson, now 76, recalls. “And even when they did, it took a long time to develop a lot of that property because the city was dying. So they swept out 20,000 people from the heart of the city to ‘make it better,’ when in fact they put in a highway. The white men who got the highway jobs and created businesses around that highway bought cars and drove them to the suburbs. And the population of St. Louis has gone down every year since then.”
It’s a chilling history, made all the more so by the way it had been largely forgotten. Even many of the area’s Black residents, Gibson says, have grown up never knowing about the once vibrant community in its heart.
Gibson’s book has changed that, in a major way. As she explains in the latest episode of The 314 Podcast, she had to bootstrap her promotions when the pandemic made it impossible to do bookstore readings. She had little knowledge of Facebook, but started proactively making friend requests to people who liked her favorite authors. Then she put herself out there.
“I had these really great reviews,” she explains. “So I showed them and then I said, ‘You know, I’m willing to do a virtual book [talk]. If you have 10 people to read this book, I will do a Zoom meeting with you.’ And they just started coming and wouldn’t stop.”
That continues today—along with in-person presentations, talks to school children, and more. She hasn’t sought out engagements in years, but the requests just keep rolling in. (It took Gibson a while to realize she ought to charge people to listen to her talk about her book—but once she did, people were happy to pay her.) At one point, she did speaking engagements just about every day. She’s since cut back to two times a week. “Every day I open up my email, and people are asking,” she says.
And now it’s not just Gibson talking about Mill Creek Valley. Part of the remarkable second life of The Last Children of Mill Creek is that people who have read the book are now picking up the gauntlet. Harris-Stowe State University’s new Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship pays tribute to the neighborhood and uses its example to inspire the entrepreneurs it works with. Great Rivers Greenway has a permanent memorial at CITY SC’s Energizer Park. Saint Louis University erected (temporary) murals.
Even Target has gotten in on the action. Its newest store in St. Louis sits squarely within what had been Mill Creek Valley, and a huge mural inside by local artist Cbabi Bayoc pays tribute to the neighborhood.
Says Gibson, “ One Saturday, my phone just started blowing up and I went, Who died? I’m wondering what is going on here.” Her friends told her she had to see the new Target in Midtown—and that’s how she discovered the mural.
She tracked down the manager and introduced herself. “I said, ‘How did this come about?’ She said, ‘I read your book,’” says Gibson. “My knees got weak.”
She adds, “You can’t shop in that Target without being confronted by this history.”
These days, Gibson is hard at work on another project to record the history of Mill Creek. The 20-minute documentary Remembering Mill Creek: When We Were There is a collaboration with filmmaker Khalid Abdulqaadir, whose father also grew up in the neighborhood. They’ve interviewed 18 other “children of Mill Creek,” each with a story to tell. But there’s a common theme: They echo Gibson’s view of Mill Creek Valley not as a slum, but as a community where they thrived.
”This was a place that nurtured children,” Gibson says. “And that was part of the story I wanted to tell.”
Gibson is currently seeking funding to expand the film. “ I really started it before I even had any money to start it,” she says of the interviews she has recorded for the documentary. “There was a while there where I thought I would be financing this whole thing, but it occurred to me that I had to start them because one person I signed up passed away. I went, OK, I cannot wait.”
The 20-minute version of the film is a testament to a remarkable story that nearly went untold, before one retiree’s beautifully written and honest book forced St. Louis to pay attention. Watching it, it’s hard not to think that it should not only be a feature-length documentary, but also a book—one that tells not just Vivian Gibson’s story, but the story of an entire community.
Asked if she would ever write the book herself, Gibson says, “You sound like my publisher!” Belt Publishing approached her about a year ago about doing a second book, which she could tie to the original book’s fifth anniversary this spring, Gibson says, but she demurred.
“ I’ve had a wonderful life after Mill Creek and an interesting life after Mill Creek, so that’s kind of what I want to write about,” she explains. Besides, she’s still incredibly busy promoting the first book.
She remains in awe of the ways that book has catalyzed important conversations in St. Louis. ”I just kind of stand around and go, Whoa, really? Thank you! This is wonderful,” she says of all the readers who have made things happen. “It’s an impact that I just could not have planned or imagined.”
Hear more from Gibson on The 314 Podcast.
