The Entrance Gate to Lewis Place

When the first African American family bought a home on Lewis Place, which runs from Walton to Taylor between Newberry Terrace and MacMillan streets, local whites resorted to moving a white family into the home under a supposed “verbal” lease. It would take years of legal action to oust them from the home. Other African American home buy- ers were sued in the St. Louis Circuit Court by whites claiming that the racial restrictive covenant on Lewis

Place had been violated. Although the initial findings of the court were in favor of the African American defendants, the suits were renewed. In fact, there was no certainty through 1944 and 1945 that these African American “pioneers” would not eventually be deprived of their properties by the courts. The African American residents of Lewis Place neutralized this concern, how- ever, by buying so many homes in the neighborhood that they were able to take over the home owners’ association in 1945 and open Lewis Place to African Americans for good.Their actions were a harbinger of things to come. Only a few months later, the African American Shelley family bought a home a few blocks northwest of Lewis Place. As had happened on Lewis Place, white residents of the Marcus Avenue District sued the Shelleys under the terms of a restrictive covenant.

Their case, Shelley v. Kraemer, was ultimately argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Shelleys and ended judicial enforcement of racial restrictive covenants across the nation in 1948.