Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

The essays in this volume collectively demonstrate that despite St. Louis’s post-World War II reputation as a conservative and sleepy Midwestern metropolis, the 1960s and 1970s saw an efflorescence of progressive organizing in the city and its immediate region. To date, the best-remembered and most thoroughly studied of such efforts are racial-justice campaigns by Black freedom movement groups, such as the city’s trailblazing chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the young activists and artists associated with diverse entities including the Black Liberators, the Black Artists’ Group, the Black River Writers, and the Zulu 1200s. Less well known are the many grassroots social-movement initiatives in St. Louis, which ranged from women’s liberation, reproductive rights, and gay liberation to antimilitarism efforts, neighborhood empowerment, and environmental justice. Most activists who engaged in these movements generally imagined themselves on the left of the political spectrum but, nevertheless, pursued different goals and often found themselves in conflict. Taken together, they constituted a distinctive, spirited, if oft-forgotten element of the social and cultural geography of St. Louis during the 1960s and in the decade’s aftermath. The illuminating scholarly contributions of this volume explore the wide range of progressive activist movements that took root in a single Midwestern city during the long 1960s.