The story of the desegregation of Lewis Place reminds us not only of the evils of Jim Crow, but that the effort to overcome them was begun long before the more storied struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and, in fact, that the triumphs of those years had their foundations in smaller victories during the years of World War II. Nor were those battles fought only by the Martin Luther King Jrs. and Thurgood Marshalls of the world. The desegregation of Lewis Place was accomplished by ordinary men and women—lawyers yes, but also teachers, sleeping car por- ters, doctors, and laborers in search of the basic human right to live, and for some, to raise their families, in a place that was safe and healthy. It was and is a good dream. The first African American children of Lewis Place—those born there or who moved there as young children—remember it as a dream realized. They remem- ber a close-knit and friendly community and a safe and happy place to grow up. They recall, too, a fierce pride in the accomplishment of opening the ornamental gates of Lewis Place to African Americans—gates that once stood fast on St. Louis’s color line.