What was built
- Established or development period
- 1890s–1917
- Peak period
- 1916–1917
- Who built the community
- Great Migration families recruited into meatpacking, aluminum and railroad work.
- Black population
- Roughly 10,000–12,000 Black residents by 1917, up sharply from the start of the decade.
- Businesses
- Black-owned barbershops, restaurants, boarding houses and small trades serving industrial workers.
- Financial institutions
- Not yet documented
- Churches
- Multiple Black congregations, several burned.
- Schools
- Segregated Black schools.
- Hospitals
- Not yet documented
- Newspapers
- Regional Black press coverage; the NAACP's Crisis documented the aftermath.
- Entertainment & cultural institutions
- Not yet documented
- Other community institutions
- Not yet documented
- Black land & property ownership
- Working-class Black home ownership and rental property in the south end.
- Economic significance
- A Black industrial workforce anchoring the meatpacking and aluminum plants of the St. Louis metro area.
What happened
- What happened?
- In May and again on July 2, 1917, white mobs attacked Black neighborhoods, shooting residents and burning homes as police and militia largely stood aside. Black families fled across the Eads Bridge into St. Louis.
- Trigger or precipitating event
- Labor conflict at the Aluminum Ore Company and rumors following a drive-by shooting and the killing of two white police officers.
- Underlying historical context
- Employers' use of Black workers during strikes, white union hostility, Great Migration housing pressure and machine politics.
- Method of destruction / displacement
- Massacre · Mob Violence · Arson
- Date or period of destruction
- May 28 and July 2, 1917
- Confirmed / documented deaths
- 39 Black and 9 white deaths in the official count.
- Estimated deaths
- Contemporary Black investigators and later historians estimate 100–200 Black deaths. SOURCES DIFFER.
- People displaced
- Roughly 6,000 Black residents driven from their homes.
- Homes destroyed
- Approximately 300 buildings burned.
- Businesses destroyed
- Not yet documented
- Acres or property lost
- Not yet documented
Afterward
- What happened to the land?
- Burned blocks were partly rebuilt and partly left vacant during the city's long industrial decline.
- Was compensation paid?
- None.
- Was the community rebuilt?
- Partially
- What was rebuilt?
- Not yet documented
- Destroyed or displaced again?
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement date
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement cause
- Not yet documented
- What exists there today?
- A largely disinvested city with memorial efforts and historical markers.
- Descendant, reparation & restoration efforts
- A congressional investigation in 1918, the NAACP's Silent Protest Parade of July 1917 and centennial commemorations.
- Historical significance
- One of the deadliest instances of racial violence of the twentieth century and a catalyst for national Black protest organizing.
Sources
- Source lookupFind
U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee report on the East St. Louis riots (1918)
- Book or scholarly workFind
Elliott Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Southern Illinois University Press, 1964)
- Source lookupFind
NAACP, The Crisis, September 1917
- Source lookupFind
Illinois State Historical Society collections
"Find" opens a focused search for legacy references that do not have a stable link; "Open" goes directly to the source.
Last verified: 2026-09-20. This is a living historical collection. Additional communities and documentation will be added as research and verification continue.