{"title":"Mill Creek: Black Metropolis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMill Creek: Black Metropolis\u003c\/em\u003e explores the rich history of a St. Louis neighborhood that historians have likened to New York’s legendary Harlem. It was the home of St. Louis’s major Black newspapers, the offices of numerous Black professionals, a center of social activism, and the birthplace of ragtime. All this richness thrived amid and despite racial segregation, providing African Americans common ground and the refuge from the daily slights and indignities of a stark color divide in 20th-century St. Louis.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart of the tragedy of Mill Creek Valley's erasure is that very little literature currently exists. We hope more locals with a connection to the area will share their stories in the future. \u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-last-children-of-mill-creek-by-vivian-gibson","title":"The Last Children of Mill Creek by Vivian Gibson","description":"\u003cp\u003eVivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a segregated working-class neighborhood of St. Louis that was razed in 1959 to build a highway, an act of racism disguised under urban renewal as “progress.” The three rooms of her childhood home were heated by a wood-burning stove; her family had no hot water or furnace, but what Gibson lacked in material comforts she made up for in imagination. A moving memoir of family life at a time very different from the present, \u003cem\u003eThe Last Children of Mill Creek\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles the everyday lived experiences of Gibson’s large family -- her seven siblings, her crafty, college-educated mother, and her hard-working father -- and the friends, shop owners, church ladies, teachers, and others who made Mill Creek into a warm, tight-knit African-American community. In Gibson’s words, “This memoir is about survival, as told from the viewpoint of a watchful young girl -- a collection of decidedly universal stories that chronicle the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaperback | 150 pages\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Missouri History Museum Shop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32571587657799,"sku":"37160","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1540\/0275\/files\/SOSTL_Product_Background_-_2024-10-15T122207.920.png?v=1729012944"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1540\/0275\/collections\/Copy_of_SOSTL_Product_Background_-_Shopify_2024_6.png?v=1784131844","url":"https:\/\/missouri-history-museum-shop.myshopify.com\/collections\/mill-creek-black-metropolis.oembed","provider":"Sold on St. Louis","version":"1.0","type":"link"}