Her day starts off as any other. 

She gets dressed, she gets something to eat and then she heads out the door for school. 

She’s one of 15 children in her family and one of six girls. Life for Kathy Black is the same as any other teen, except she’s black in the 1950s. The country is “separate but equal,” but according to Kathy, nothing is really equal.

She lives in Kinloch, the oldest all-black community in Missouri. Segregation is still in full effect in Saint Louis County, so she goes to an all-black high school in her all-black town with almost everything they need. After school, she meets with her friends at the local teenage hangout spot, Uncle Dick’s. Her life is contained within the city limits of Kinloch.

“It was a regular town, we had everything except a bank,” Kathy said. “We rode our bikes. We went to school. The high school had teams. We got up on Sundays and went to church. As teenagers we went to school. After school we had a hangout for teenagers called Uncle Dick’s. We went there and spun our records and ordered hamburgers and we danced. From that point of view we were a normal town, just like a white town. We were just all black.”

Kinloch was first developed in the 1890s and was like every other white town in Saint Louis. But towards the 1920s, it became a majority black town due to restrictive housing in the city. The city continued to grow and even became home to an airfield where many historic events took place. Despite the destructive nature of segregation, Kinloch was able to become a prominent black community that was home to hundreds of black families.

Kathy grew up in the segregated United States but it didn’t make her bitter. Growing up she knew that it was just how things were and until the laws were changed, nothing could be done about it. 

Kinloch was all she knew. 

According to Kathy, the isolation of the town brought comfort and safety in a time where black people were rarely protected. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Kathy was able to move out of Kinloch in 1963.

The Civil Rights era was an empowering time for many black Americans. Protests around the country sparked change within the laws that were rooted in discrimination. In Saint Louis, there were sit-ins and demonstrations but nothing compared to what was going on in the south. Kathy watched it all from a distance.

“Sadly, I guess I did not have the courage,” Kathy said. “I was nowhere near them and I never thought about going and joining. I think, to me, that it was a calling. You had to have courage and conviction and I’ve often wondered how those people got all of that courage and conviction.”

The protests might have changed the laws, but it took time for them to change minds. Kathy witnessed some places that would rather close down than let black people in when they finally had to. The process of desegregation was slow. Opportunities that weren’t afforded to black people before the Civil Rights Act was passed didn’t come right after the bill was signed, but they slowly came. Even with new opportunities, some towns like Kinloch were left out.

During the 1980s, the City of Saint Louis bought out homes in Kinloch to expand the Lambert Airport. This displaced hundreds of families in Kinloch, causing the town to lose over 80 percent of its population. Now, the town is no longer what Kathy remembers and could even be described as a ghost town. While Kathy’s life was able to get better due to the opportunities afforded by things like the Civil Rights Act being passed, Kinloch got worse. Kathy eventually moved out of Kinloch with her husband, David, and was able to have a family that was better off than she was growing up. 

The future for Kinloch is starting to look brighter. Renovation efforts are being made to rebuild parts of Kinloch and $1.5 million in funding has been allocated to help these efforts in the past year. Hopefully one day, Kinloch will be restored to the beloved town Kathy grew up in.