Branch School Buildings in the St. Louis Public Schools District: Tools to Support the Segregative Neighborhood School Policy of the St. Louis Board of Education

Abstract

During and after World War II, large numbers of African Americans from the former Confederate States migrated to St. Louis, Missouri. The pace of this migration placed a strain on the St. Louis Public Schools district. The district responded to the facilities shortage by constructing small branch school buildings in its compliance with de jure segregation laws in Missouri before 1954, and after 1954, in its efforts to covertly maintain a pseudo-integrated public school district’s neighborhood school policy.