Read this now: Vivian Gibson's 'The Last Children of Mill Creek'

The book is a critical addition to our understanding and preservation of the people who once lived in the thriving community demolished by city leaders.

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Twenty thousand people. Thousands of houses. Over 40 churches. Dozens of businesses. Centers of the African-American community in the heart of St. Louis. All were demolished in Mill Creek in the years following World War II. Replacing them was what would become known as “Hiroshima Flats.” Where those people lived is now beginning to fade into the past; however, it's not too late for St. Louis to preserve memories from Mill Creek. A recent book by Vivian Gibson, The Last Children of Mill Creek, is a critical addition to our understanding and preservation of the people who once lived in the thriving community that was annihilated by city leaders beginning 70 years ago.

It’s been a long, interesting life for Gibson. When her family’s home in the Mill Creek neighborhood, 2649 Bernard Street, was marked for demolition in the late 1950s, they moved to a house in Hamilton Heights. Gibson later became a fashion designer in New York City and completed a residency in Liberia, West Africa. All of those experiences have turned her into a masterful storyteller, bringing her childhood in the lost neighborhood to life.

Back in St. Louis since the early 1980s, Gibson had been “writing little stories and paragraphs and essays” about her childhood growing up in the historic African-American neighborhood.

“I was cleaning out my desk of papers, and I found a lot of things I had been writing,” Gibson remembers. She enrolled in a creative writing workshop at OASIS, where she also teaches genealogy. At first, the class challenged her to write short stories of only 500 words, which honed her writing skills. Before long, she linked up with Belt Publishing, and wrote what is her first book about growing up in Mill Creek.

The block of Bernard Street between Jefferson and Leffingwell, where Gibson’s family lived, no longer exists, but the majority of the story occurs within the confines of the Italianate house that had been built in the years after the Civil War as the city pushed out west past its old boundaries. By the 20th century, the wealthy whites who had originally built the rows of houses west of Union Station had moved further west, and African-Americans had moved in during the Great Migration. While there was certainly poverty, there were also people of all different economic means.

“It was a real neighborhood, a community. Black people had businesses. There were factories that people could walk to for work,” Gibson reminisces, also describing how Lawton Boulevard, which ran west of Jefferson, was once lined with the homes of prominent business owners who lived and worked in Mill Creek. And there were all those churches with their amazing architecture. Gibson’s family attended Northern Missionary Baptist Church at 514 South Ewing.

As Gibson weaves the narrative of her childhood in the neighborhood, she tells the stories of everyday family life growing up in the years after World War II. Unknown to her at the time, outside forces—the city government—were planning the destruction of the community she called home. Little details of life then, seemingly inconsequential at the time, now take on great resonance. Her description in the book of starching shirts was fascinating, speaking to me across generations. When we spoke on Sunday, Gibson also related a story to me of crossing an old cast iron footbridge with wood planks over the broad swath of train tracks that still snake through the center of St. Louis to the south of her old neighborhood. There were planks missing from the ancient bridge, so walking across the crumbling span was an adventure on the way to school.

“I still have dreams to this day of falling through that bridge,” Gibson says. For fun, the family would walk down to Union Station and see travelers departing dressed up in their “traveler’s best” (remember when people dressed up to travel?) or to look at the Meeting of the Waters by Carl Milles across Market Street from the terminal. There was also a row of movie theaters west on Market, including one known as the “Funky” London.

Why was it known as the Funky London?

“Probably because it didn’t smell good,” Gibson says, laughing. “You could bring your own popcorn to the movie theater back then and stay all day long.”

Gibson’s father had a good job working with the streetcar company, but in 1955 he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while repairing a rail in the middle of the street. He recovered and received a payout from St. Louis Public Service. It arrived just in time, as the City of St. Louis was ramping up its demolition of the neighborhood they called home. With the money from the accident as a down payment, they bought a house far out in the West End/Hamilton Heights neighborhood, near Hempstead Elementary School, in 1959. After being raised around the black walnut trees of her block of Bernard Street, Gibson was now struck by the beauty of the rows of sycamore trees lining the streets of her neighborhood. In the greatest of ironies, after a few years at Hempstead Elementary, she found herself bused back down to her old neighborhood for school due to overcrowding. She then left St. Louis after high school.

“These stories ended up being about humanizing the people who lived there," Gibson says. "I really wanted people to remember that we were there. I didn’t want us to be forgotten. There isn’t even a plaque.”

Those words resonated with me. For the last month, I’ve been writing about famous architects whose marble-clad buildings sit along some of the most prominent streets of our city. They all have plaques and some even have statues dedicated to their memory. They’re not in any danger of being forgotten any time soon. But I think of one woman Gibson mentions in her book, Miss Lit’l Bit. Most likely a woman named Ester Phillips, she and her memory might have been completely lost if not for Gibson’s book. That's ultimately the value of The Last Children of Mill Creek: It humanizes and reminds us that real people lived with dignity in the heart of St. Louis, and that soul was ripped out of the middle of our city when the entire neighborhood was destroyed in the name of “progress.”

For Gibson, who now lives in a downtown loft, in a renovated warehouse, along those same railroad tracks she once gingerly crossed, life has in a way full come circle.

“Late at night," she says. "I can hear the sound of trains that I heard as a child.”

The Last Children of Mill Creek is available for purchase at EyeSeeMe African American Children’s Bookstore, Subterranean Books, Left Bank Books, or directly from Belt Publishing. Gibson will discuss the book on Left Bank Books' Facebook Live, 7 p.m. on May 19.

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