Why Local Black Leaders Must Adopt Dr. King’s Economic Dream


by Sylvester Brown. Jr.

“Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering forces of justice.”– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.




January, the annual time of year when the nation revisits the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Locally, dignitaries, preachers, politicians and pundits will, no doubt, remind us that we have much work to do in order to make Dr. King’s dream of racial equality a reality. In this, the Trump era, many will lament the fact that the president’s 2020 proposed budget calls for cutting $1 trillion over the next decade from programs that help low-and moderate-income households. For example, hundreds of thousands of poor people will be denied food stamps under Trump’s new proposed guidelines.
It is appropriate to use this month to reflect on the racial and economic disparities King lived and died trying to address. But wouldn’t it be refreshing if local politicians-particularly local black politicians- proclaimed a plan based on King’s other dream of economic emancipation, inclusion and self-sufficiency?

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if local politicians-particularly local black politicians- proclaimed a plan based on King’s other dream of economic emancipation, inclusion and self-sufficiency?

In 1965, Dr. King advocated a $50 billion federal program aimed at employing poor people across the nation to rebuild their own neighborhoods and communities. He outlined the public works program in an interview with writer Alex Haley for Playboy Magazine. The “Negro rehabilitation” program, King said, could be designed in the same breath as the GI Bill of Rights which encouraged the same business and home loans as well as “preferential employment” for the disadvantaged as it did for veterans.
The physical ghetto itself, King said, must be eliminated, adding that it “is both socially and morally suicidal to continue a pattern of deploring effects while failing to come to grips with the causes.”
St. Louis has yet to come to grips with the causes of crime and poverty in its disadvantaged neighborhoods. The city’s long and sordid history of segregated development thrives in modern times. Back in 2016, Molly Metzger, an assistant professor at Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work warned that the city, through public policies was “re-segregating” itself. Metzger, one of several scholars quoted in a St. Louis Magazine article, challenged city leaders who okayed the spending millions in tax-payer dollars on incentives designed to lure people back to the city.

The city’s long and sordid history of segregated development thrives in modern times.

After 1950, St. Louis’ peak population shrunk from almost 900,000 to about 320,000 today. City leaders desperately want to bring middle-class whites back to the city. In order to do this, the city finally wants to invest and revitalize long ignored areas in North St. Louis.  For example, the ballyhooed National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) new $1.75 billion headquarters on Jefferson and Cass avenues will serve as the linchpin for massive neighborhood turnaround and gentrification in north St. Louis.
On his Facebook page in December, former comptroller, Virvus Jones called out black aldermen who voted to approve $34.45 million in tax-payer subsidies for “millionaire developers” while not appropriating “one dime to alleviate poverty.” Some of these perks include $11.85 million in tax-increment financing to redevelop the former Post-Dispatch building downtown with high-end apartments. Another $14.1 million in incentives will be allocated for apartments, retail and parking spaces near the Forest Park-DeBaliviere MetroLink station.
Fine, I get it. Investments in tony developments, baseball, soccer, Ferris wheels and aquariums might increase tourism, maybe improve the city’s image and probably attract younger, working-class people to the city. What I can’t wrap my head around, however, is why black politicians-who sign off on these deals-can’t get a little quid-pro-quo for the areas they supposedly represent.
On several occasions, King spoke of the government’s willingness to dole out free land and resources to European immigrants seeking a better life in America. If free land was the economic remedy for whites back then, King asked, why can’t it be a tool to combat poverty today? 

What I can’t wrap my head around, however, is why black politicians-who sign off on these deals-can’t get a little quid-pro-quo for the areas they supposedly represent.

In the month that we celebrate the iconic civil rights leader, it would be so cool to hear black politicians outline a plan that touches on his dream of equity and sustainability. A 2018 resilience assessment study released by Mayor Lyda Krewson’s office noted that the city has 25,000 vacant lots that contribute to blight, “lower property values and declining city revenues.”
Of the millions and millions politicians gift to fat cat developers, surely there’s a way to set aside a couple million for a plan similar to King’s 1965 public works proposal. Here are my thoughts: First, the city should GIVE vacant land and abandoned buildings to residents. Second, it should provide stipends to potential home and landowners to help rehab buildings and turn vacant lots into food-producing land. Third, it should fund programs that teach and employ young people to demolish and/or rehab vacant buildings.
I’m not just talking pie-in-the-sky rhetoric here. Last year, with the help of Grace Hill Settlement House and a private landowner, my nonprofit, the Sweet Potato Project, secured a few vacant lots in the College Hill neighborhood. Three of those lots were gifted to a young mother who wants to grow fresh food. I connected with the nonprofits Gateway Greening and the North City Food Hub. Our plan and my personal goal is to raise the funds necessary to provide this young lady and others with classes and resources to not only transform vacant land and grow food but to take their produce to market and create marketable food-based products that can be sold locally.
This may be a pebble-in-the-ocean approach but, if successful, it could have wide-ranging benefits for the city and hundreds of low-income residents. Because everybody eats, I maintain that growing, packaging and distributing fresh food can serve as the new economic engine in North St. Louis. Instead of forcing residents out of neighborhoods in the wave of encroaching development, this plan can help them become vested participants, benefactors of change.  
All that’s needed is vision, a new much-needed approach and the wiliness of politicians to seriously direct tax dollars and incentives to poor residents and blighted areas in need.  
In the Playboy interview, King talked about the need to help “the Negro” develop “a sense of stewardship.” Wouldn’t it be uplifting to hear speeches about a local economic development plan that could inspire vested home and landowners to serve as the eyes, ears and hearts in troubled neighborhoods?

All that’s needed is vision, a new much-needed approach and the wiliness of politicians to seriously direct tax dollars and incentives to poor residents and blighted areas in need.  

What better time than now to align ourselves with the words of the assassinated leader who challenged us to never, ever be satisfied…” until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.”



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Sylvester Brown, Jr. is a former columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, founder of the Sweet Potato Project, an entrepreneurial program for urban youth and author of  “When We Listen: Recognizing the Potential of Urban Youth.”

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