This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 12, 2012 - Many St. Louisans may connect the name Annie Malone with a springtime parade that bears her name but not know about the children’s home named after her and the neighborhood that has contributed to the rich history of the city.
From the 1880s through the 1940s, given the city's financial support of its segregated schools and hospitals, one could say that St. Louis came as close as it could to creating "separate but equal" institutions.
Sumner High School was the first African-American high school established west of the Mississippi. A Normal School for teacher education soon followed at Sumner, renamed Stowe College and one of the precursors of Harris Stowe State University.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital, also called City Hospital #2, was built not only to care for African-American patients, but to train African-American doctors and nurses. It was one of the few institutions in America doing so at the time.
A history of Annie Malone
These separate-but-equal institutions, including the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, were clustered in the Ville, a segregated, middle-class St. Louis neighborhood. A city ordinance and, later, private restrictive covenant agreements among property owners barred African-Americans from owning property in many neighborhoods. The Ville was one of the few exceptions, and many successful African-American businesses and residents were concentrated there.
One of the Ville's most famous residents was Annie Malone, an orphan who funded the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home and whose cosmetics company made her at one time the richest African-American woman in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down restrictive property covenants in 1948 and school segregation followed in 1954, although nearly 30 years would pass before federal courts began overseeing St. Louis' school desegregation.
The city integrated its hospital system but closed City Hospital #1 for whites as well as #2 in the 1970s and 1980s, shifting health care to public clinics and private hospitals. Middle-class African-Americans joined the flight to suburbs from the city, and the Ville declined.
Even Malone moved – to Chicago, in 1946, the same year the orphans home was renamed the Annie Malone Children's Home in her honor.
With the dismantling of segregation, pride in African-American institutions remained – settling on churches, Sumner, Vashon (the second high school built for African-American students) and the Annie Malone Children's Home. An enduring symbol of this pride is the Annie Malone Parade, which kicks off a series of fundraising events for the children’s organization each May.
“The parade means a lot to people,” says Darryl Wise, vice president of programs and planning for the Annie Malone organization. “We found that out when we moved it downtown in 2005. There was such an uproar. People were outraged we were moving out of the neighborhood. People took that personally.”
Delsie Boyd, a former chairman of the Annie Malone board, remembers marching in the parade as an elementary and high school student. He said the board changed the parade route because it “wanted to be more inclusive. All the major parades go through downtown.” It was a logical extension of the expansion of the center’s mission to all children as well as an expansion of the center’s fundraising to all potential donors.
In May, Annie Malone will celebrate its 125th anniversary with several events, leading off May 1 with the performance of a stage play, “The May Day Parade.”
On May 19, the actual May Day Parade will step off in downtown St. Louis, and a community homecoming fair will be offered June 15.
The anniversary celebration will wrap up Aug. 23 with the Soiree 125th Dinner Celebration.
Virginia Gilbert and Barry Gilbert are freelance writers.