.... At the confluence of American currents, St. Louis is a living laboratory of migration patterns and social change. Most longtime residents know the big picture, which stretches from the city-county divide of the 1870s to the white flight of the 1950s. The documentary “Spanish Lake” focuses all-too-closely on a northern corner of that canvas. In the postwar years, Spanish Lake was a rural refuge for middle-class whites from north St. Louis. The film, by Spanish Lake native Phillip Andrew Morton, introduces us to dozens of former Spanish Lake residents. Emphasis on “former,” as exodus is the theme of the film. At a 2011 reunion of beer-drinking “Lakers,” we meet middle-aged whites of a certain St. Louis type — a little bit country, a little bit rock ’n’ roll. They lament the passing of the world they once knew, where union dads brought home the bacon and their children played in an Eden near the riverbanks. But Eden didn’t have a mayor. Spanish Lake, settled near an 18th century fort at the merging of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, remained proudly unincorporated. So after the feds demolished the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis and needed new space for high-density housing, there was no Spanish Lake city government to negotiate with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Meanwhile, adjoining Black Jack incorporated and filed a lawsuit to stop the construction of low-income housing units for high-risk “Section 8” tenants. In the slow course of several decades, white residents of the area mostly migrated to St. Charles County. https://youtube/watch?v=Yw38xwWu3r4&feature=share stltoday/entertainment/movies/reviews/nervous-north-county-whites-dominate-documentary-spanish-lake/article_191a87b0-2c7d-55da-bcfc-ae5b3ca06f1a.html
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:14:56 +0000
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