On April 1, 1861, the municipality called East St. Louis was established. At its peak East St. Louis, Illinois, was a great city. Built on the wetlands across from St. Louis after the Civil War the city forced itself on land the Mississippi River often tried to reclaim. East St. Louis survived and even thrived, with a booming industrial and commercial base. In the 1950s it reached its zenith of 82,000 people and it was named an all American City, an honor proudly displayed on a billboard-sized sign in a park.
Digging Deeper
But soon East St. Louis began to decline. The industrial base began to move or close, followed by the retail outlets boarding up their storefronts. As the percentage of blacks began to increase whites began moving out. Black, who had long suffered by an all white city government and police force, began to assert their rights. East St. Louis always had a rough side with red light districts, speakeasies during Prohibition, clubs where Miles Davis and Ike Turner once played, gambling all controlled by mob boss Buster Wortman but the vice was replaced by violence which gave the city a national reputation for crime.
