History of East Saint Louis Essay

tocopherol Saint Louis, Illinois is a very sm each(prenominal) urban center it has a total of 89 streets as of today. Around in the 1860s the city used to be called Illinois town. It was the fourth largest city in the allege of Illinois. People knew one place they could exact a job was in this city. The name East Saint Louis came ab bulge because of the terrible reputation it had when it was cognize as Illinois town so they decided to rename it hoping to overcome all the challenges they were facing. Jobs started to vanish, riots broke out and blacks moving t here was the cause of all this. nigh of the blacks that lived there came from down South where living conditions couldnt be such(prenominal) worst. If they had a chance to move their children they did. They didnt want their children to experience the deportment of picking cotton as they had. The whites there were upset and werent exhalation to let the blacks take their jobs.As time grew and more than blacks start to come , the more jobs started to leave so as the jobs started to leave the Population started to decline consequence levyes were higher and cuts had to be made. One investor had in mind if he bought more or less vacant lots that he could make a little notes on the side, because the federal government was going to provide funds for nooky housing to be scattered throughout the city, so the empty holding will be his quick get rich scheme. When the housing position began building Low-income housing, real-estates agents and developers made a lot of money building and merchandising houses in West Belleville. The whites started to flee once they started to build in their neighborhoods.As time as started to pass things started to get worst, Violence were quite a little were hurt, Homes universe broken into, people being robbed, and killed. The population in the 1960 was around 81,728, as of 2011 the population is 27,000, with an estimated 14,000 resident living in public housing that lea ves the tax burden on the 13,000. Forty percent of the residents draw public aid. The blacks who be able are fleeing away from the city as well. This makes the population play along to drop.In 1972, James Williams was the town black first Mayor he defeated Charles Merritts even though Merritts had the support of the white Democrats. Thereafter Merritts was designate to federal prison for taking kickbacks as president of School order 189 Board of Education and also for putting a contract out to kill Clyde C. Jordan, a great leader for the town who was a cub school board member and publisher of the Crusader black hebdomadal newspaper.In the present year we can see that nothing has changed. totally the corruption of this town has been going on since the beginning of time. Nothing very has change, we might see a new promising building here and now but the wrong people still holds the key to the mental picture of this all. We as citizens of East St. Louis, IL hopefully one day g et the courage to stand up for whats right and not chafe about the consequence we might endure. Change is good and the city of East Saint Louis needs a tremendous change and we as the people can and shall make that happen.