Lyndsey Ellis is a St. Louis native and Heartland Journalism Fellowship recipient whose fiction and journalism have appeared in a variety of print and online publications. Her debut novel, “Bone Broth” (Hidden Timber Books, 2021), was a 2022 Friends of American Writers Literature Award winner and selected by Maryville University for use in the student curriculum. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and holds a master’s in fine arts from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
It has been surreal to witness more of our departures from here than our arrivals. Having been among those who left, I returned searching for clarity on the future of St. Louis and still believe in its imminent reinvention.
What was once America’s fourth-largest city remains an enigma consistently met with collective ambivalence. There is a dark side to the city, especially when it comes to racial disparities. Historically, decades of oppression have left a bad taste in the mouths of many Black St. Louisans.
The mass exodus of Black St. Louisans in recent years continues to raise eyebrows and stir concerns that question where longtime residents are going, but mostly, why they are leaving.
As of July 2022, Blacks totaled 128,387, or 44.8 percent, of St. Louis’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2019, the number of Black St. Louisans numbered 136,167, or 45.3 percent, of the city’s population. The migratory trends among African Americans here raises the question if this is a new-age forced migration, and if so, to what extent?