ST. LOUIS — A walk down the 6-mile city street named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. yields plenty of images that would surely unsettle the civil rights leader: shuttered storefronts, open-air drug markets and a glut of pawn shops, quickie check-cashing providers and liquor stores.
The urban decay along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in St. Louis can be found in other major American cities, from Houston and Milwaukee to the nation’s capital.
“It’s a national problem,” said Melvin White, 46, a postal worker in St. Louis and founder of a 3-year-old nonprofit group that is trying to restore King’s legacy on asphalt. “Dr. King would be turning over in his grave.”
Nearly three decades into the observance of Monday’s federal holiday, the continuing decline of the most visible symbols of King’s work has White and others calling for a renewed commitment to the more than 900 streets nationwide named in honor of the Atlanta native.
The effort centers in St. Louis, where the small nonprofit is working to reclaim MLK roadways as a source of pride and inspiration.
White’s goals are ambitious, his resources admittedly modest. A neighborhood park is planned across the street from the group’s headquarters. An urban agriculture project to encourage residents to eat healthy and grow their own food has preliminary support from nearby Washington University.
Above all, Beloved Streets of America wants to build community from the ashes of what was once a thriving retail corridor when White was a child.
The template can be found a mile away. Delmar Boulevard, which saw a similar decline, is now a vibrant retail corridor packed with restaurants, nightclubs, a renovated movie theater and a boutique hotel. The renaissance earned Delmar recognition in 2007 as one of “10 Great Streets in America” by the American Planning Association.
Journalist Jonathan Tilove, who wrote a 2003 book based on visits to 650 King streets nationwide, called the King byways “black America’s Main Street.”
“Map them and you map a nation within a nation, a place where white America seldom goes and black America can be itself,” he wrote. “It is a parallel universe with a different center of gravity and distinctive sensibilities. … There is no other street like it.”
Chicago’s Martin Luther King Drive, a major thoroughfare spanning a dozen miles south of downtown, is anchored by important hubs of black life in the city.
In Miami, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard stretches from the predominantly Cuban town of Hialeah through largely black Liberty City and into Little Haiti — a reflection of both the city’s diverse demographics as well as its lingering segregation.
For Derek Alderman, a King street scholar, the struggle to reclaim MLK Jr. Drive in St. Louis offers a portrayal of the battles King waged a half-century ago and where such efforts need to reach into the 21st Century.
“Those street names are really powerful social indicators of how far we’ve come in really fulfilling the dream, and giving us an indication of where we need to do more work,” he said.
