The black Americans in St. Louis were zoned into the industrial section by white city planners starting in 1901. Whites in that city bought tenement houses where blacks Americans could live near the factories so black Americans could work the lowest paying jobs in those factories, or travel to white zoned schools and office buildings as the city built up over the decades. White zoned housing started back then after white racial attacks before 1900. The 1934 FHA law put a redline around these planned black zones and prevent black Americans from moving out of them by not allowing mortgages of them and from moving into non-redlined areas (the yellow, blue and green areas in the federal maps used by banks and the national association of realtors).
Black Americans were prevented from marrying whites by laws and attending non-segregated schools. They were locked out of the “good” side of St. Louis, and created an image for “average” hard working white that blacks Americans were somehow lesser because they were not allowed in white parts of the cities. The simple fact is they were locked out by law of fair employment and contralto harassed by police in their area zoned by whites. Their anger was justified.
Of course the violence against some white girl standing at a bus stop may have been unwarranted. But the fact remained in that city black Americans were disproportionately jailed and convicted for minor perceived crimes without fair legal representation because the 13th amendment meant they could literally work as slaves or indentured servants, making 20 cents an hour to make license plates. Today, privately owned and run prisons (“correctional facilities) have manufacturing plants inside them using this 13th amendment nearly free labor, taking away jobs from Americans outside prisons and repressing labor costs for all Americans. So, St. Louis was structured by white city planners and federal mortgages given by local banks (or denied by local banks) to segregated black Americans and prevent their upward and outward mobility. Singular examples of crimes against whites are not in the larger picture counter examples to white racism, though they are horrible for the individual who was hurt of course.
