Before there was Menard’s off East Hanley Road and south of Interstate 64, there was a vibrant, close-knit African American community called Hadley Township in Richmond Heights.
It was established in 1907 by the Evens and Howard Fire Brick Co. as a way to attract and keep its African American employees working and living in the same area, which at the time in St. Louis County was segregated.
The brickyard company built two-by-two framed homes for its employees to live in rent-free. However, the company began to fold during the Great Depression, and it sold its homes to Black people for low prices. African Americans cultivated the area and built schools, restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, social clubs and salons. They also started their own gardens and farms on undeveloped land because the area did not have public transit.
In the 1920s, Richmond Heights slowly began to develop commercial properties in the area, and more Black people moved there, including former resident Margie P. Hollins’ mother, who moved near Dale and Banneker avenues in 1922.
“My mother was raised in Hadley Township; she left and started a family, and we moved back when I was 5 years old,” Hollins said.
“I remember that it was a great place to live,” Hollins said. “Everyone in the community knew each other … we had African American teachers and an African American principal, and everyone in the community nurtured and encouraged all of the children.”
The infusion of education and love kept the community together throughout the mid-20th century, but the area was a prime location for urban renewal highway projects and other developments. And over the years, new developments pushed some of its Black residents out. However, in 2014, after a blight study, Richmond Heights officials approved the destruction of the rest of Hadley Township for the $63 million commercial development of Menards and other stores, which caught the attention of Hollins.
The filmmaker and journalist canvassed her former neighborhood 11 years ago and captured demolition efforts of vacant homes, churches and other sacred places to residents for her latest documentary, “We Bear Witness: The African American Legacy of Hadley Township, Mo.” The film highlights the township’s golden years, historians and city officials discuss how the demolition came about, and residents talk about the effects of urban renewal on Black communities.
“If you take the place where a person came from, it's very difficult for you to establish that they ever existed there,” Hollins said. “I don't want people to drive past that … and [say] ‘Oh, this is a nice stretch of land’ and never think about the people who lived there.”
In 2019, Richmond Heights dedicated a plaque commemorating the township and the efforts its residents put forth for African Americans in the region. Still, Hollins said more is needed to preserve its rich history.
“We are one of the disappearing African American communities,” Hollins said. “Even though the structures may have been dismantled or demolished, I want anybody who travels Hanley Road or goes down Dale Avenue or Laclede Station Road near West Bruno and even going over to the Walmart to know that there was an African American community here because they don't know.”
St. Louis Public Radio’s Andrea Henderson spoke with the documentary filmmaker and journalist about her former neighborhood and what motivated her to capture its demolition.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Andrea Henderson: What makes Hadley Township so special?
Margie P. Hollins: Hadley Township was a historic place to live. The community developed as a very thriving, vibrant, close-knit village, kind of concept. We were nurtured by everyone. There are a lot of very famous people who came out of Hadley Township. Mae Wheeler, also known as Lady Jazz, Henry Hampton, who became Pulitzer Prize winner for the documentary “Eyes on the Prize”. Dr. Norma Raybon, who was a conductor for Spelman College Glee Club. Those are a few of the people who came out of Hadley Township.
Henderson: When did you first hear that the City of Richmond Heights was going to demolish Hadley Township?
Hollins: I first heard about it in 2014. My oldest sister, who still lived in Richmond Heights, called, and she was hysterical. She was saying that I needed to come — since I was a historian and a journalist — and document them tearing down Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. And because she was so hysterical, I told her I would come. So, I took a videographer, and we did the first run of being in Hadley Township and documenting them actually tearing the structure down of the church. Because people saw the cameras, they came out, and they wanted to talk, and that's when I found that they were talking about eminent domain, talking about how the city was being dismantled, and I began to develop tape along the way.
Henderson: What would you say were some of the most striking things that you learned from the residents that you spoke to about Hadley Township for your documentary?
Hollins: That they loved it.
Henderson: Did you not think they loved it before?
Hollins: I always thought that they loved it, but the fact that they still love it today with it not being there, sometimes it's out of sight, out of mind and people move on. The most interesting thing that you will hear them talk about is how we were educated, how close-knitted we were through the generations. They talked about the “Pink Tea Ladies” park because that's where everybody went. These women went to church, and that they had the cotillions, and some were women suffragettes. I guess the most interesting thing that I found was that even though as many years as it has been that I left, it never left me.
Henderson: What were some of your first thoughts when you arrived back in 2014 and saw the destruction because you were once a resident in the area?
Hollins: It was awful. Before, if your friends came to visit from out of town, they would say, ‘Where did you grow up?’ and you're able to take them to a physical spot. However, it's a gut-wrenching thing to actually observe buildings that you played in, that you knew, and you're wondering why. My first thought was why, and then my sister said, ‘How many more shopping centers do they need? How many more gas stations or anything else when they already had the Galleria? They also had Brentwood Square. They also had Lowe's and Walmart. Why do you have to take this African American community?’ And I didn't have an answer for her at that time, but I was familiar to know that Hadley Township is not the only African American community that's been dismantled or demolished, not even in Missouri or even in St Louis. You had Kinloch, you had Robertson, you had Meacham Park. You had Mill Creek.
So it seems very much that businesses or people who make these decisions, whether it's the highway department that needs a better route or they need to widen the street, or whether it's anybody else, they make the decisions, but they don't live there. Was it prudent? What thought went into the decision, or was it just an economic decision, or was it greed? And most of the residents that I spoke with, they felt that it was the lesser. It wasn't like Hadley Township was a slum. We grew up with nice homes. We didn't have any crime. We weren't the typical or stereotypical thought of what you would think when you think of an African American community. We were just a quiet village that raised its children and looked out for the sake of the community.
Henderson: Throughout the early 2000s, redevelopment notifications went to family members from the city and there were city hall meetings about proposed changes to the community well until demolition. Did you know about everything that was happening in the community on the city government level, if not, when did you start paying attention to things?
Hollins: When they first started talking about [redevelopment] again after 2002, I think that people gave up. When you have a blight study, that usually seals the deal, because they are able to code and say there's a need to remove this structure because it's unsafe. But I never knew because I think that I was so busy doing everything else. My siblings did not live in Hadley Township anymore, so once our family moved, there was no one there to tell us what they were doing except my sister, who was still very tied to Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church.
Henderson: Homes in Hadley Township were coded vacant, poor conditions or delinquent in taxes in the 2013 blight study. When did people in the community start to actually leave Hadley Township before demolition?
Hollins: When I spoke with some of the residents who had already left, they spoke of feeling that they were not able to fight a city government. So it wasn't until 2014 after the 2013 Blight study, that they were able to get the developer that actually came in and built the shopping center and all those things that went along with Menards. When I talked with some of the historians, what they said is that there was also heir property, where property may have been in a family, and it went from one generation to the other, but the paperwork was with the original owner. If you did not own the property, or you didn't have a clear title, then you weren't able to negotiate or get the best price or do anything else related to the property. So, you have people that vacated the property after they took what was offered to them in the beginning [years before], and then they realized later on that that deal didn't go through, but they had already sold the property. By the time they did the blight study, they had … enough property to say this is a deterrent.
Henderson: When you think of Hadley Township, do you consider its disappearance urban renewal?
Hollins: Urban removal, that’s what the residents I interviewed called it. When I really think about that, as a journalist, I tried to remain impartial because that's our job. But at the same time, it became very personal. I don't think I was as impartial at the end of the film as perhaps I was when my sister first called because once I spoke with the people, there's a difference between being gone from your home and being able to come back. So, even though I wasn't living there, that's still in my heart; that's my home. So, did they need to take it? I don't think so. Does it have an adjective for what you call it? I would imagine that it was an economic reason. Some of the residents have said that it was greed. It is more personal to them because they're still living there. Some of them that just moved out because of buyouts, see they have a different perspective than me, who left in 1960. I'm not really sure if I have a good adjective to ascribe to how I feel [about urban renewal], but I know that I don't feel good.
Henderson: Why do you think that right now is the best time to tell the story about Hadley Township?
Hollins: Because people don't know, and when you go past there's no evidence. Had I gone past and at least I had seen something that said that an African American community was established here in 1907, and it was called Hadley Township on the corner of Hanley Road and Dale Avenue and that it was vertical and large enough that the thousands of people who come by and stop at the QuikTrip, or they stop at Panda Express, then [it would not be needed]. I don't want anybody to ever forget that Hadley Township and its residents live there, and that we were important, and that we're not only important to Richmond Heights, but we're important as human beings in the process of being a part of the total fabric in the United States.
