Someone was recently telling me that their grandparents came from Granite City, Illinois. I hadn't heard of that place, so they told me it was just across from St. Louis. I said, Oh, is it by East St. Louis?
You may or may not know that East St. Louis is the Black ghetto — there is no other word for it — just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis in Illinois, created by racism, segregation, deindustrialization, disinvestment, and a history of white race riots.
Granite City, it turns out, is not far north of East St. Louis, and it's a white working class to middle class industrial city of moderate size. Its Wikipedia page describes the industries based that have been based there (steel and, yes, granite), and the various European immigrant groups who populated it.
I was not terribly surprised to find this information on the page:
Around 1903, Granite City expelled its African American residents. In 1967, the Congress of Racial Equality alleged that Granite City was a sundown town. Mayor Donald Partney acknowledged that the city was commonly understood to have a sundown ordinance but denied that it was official.
As of the 2020 Census, Granite City's population is still 91.5% white.
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