Fixing the Odds in Black Jack

Ten years ago, Black Jack, Mo., was bucolic farmland, a crossroads settlement that took its name from a stand of blackjack oak trees that once shaded farmers on their way to market in St. Louis, 15 miles to the north. All of this changed in the '60s with the arrival of the subdividers and developers who cut many of the farms into lots, built ranch and split-level houses in the $30,000 to $35,000 price range. Soon Black Jack was engulfed by the white exodus to the suburbs. Now the town is in the middle of a controversy that is certain to be one of the major civil rights issues of the '70s: Can the white suburbs that encircle the nation's big cities continue to zone out poor blacks?

The current controversy was brought about by the Interreligious Center for Urban Affairs Inc., a St. Louis social-action group, funded by 17 religious denominations. Black Jack was still an unincorporated bedroom community when the center signed a purchase agreement for 11.9 acres of a former bean field two days before Christmas 1969. The land was to be the site of a low-income housing project, the sixth that the group had initiated, the first in the suburbs. Says Center Director Jack Quigley: "If we were not to be guilty of gilding the ghetto, we would have to get into the suburbs." Black Jack was chosen because it was one of the few areas in northern St. Louis County that was zoned for multiple-family dwellings. Named Park View Heights, the $3.5 million project would have consisted of two-and three-story brick homes, broken by green space and recreation areas. The 210 tenants would have been families with incomes ranging between $5,528 and $9,800. But then the trouble began.

Rumors spread that the Federal Government, through FHA-insured loans, was going to turn the town into a haven for poor blacks. Opponents of the project raised fears of overcrowded schools and crime on the poorly lit streets. In March of 1970, "improvement associations" in the Black Jack area invited representatives of the Interreligious Center to a meeting. Paul Mittelstadt, the center's housing director, recalls that "all the questions were tinted by racial considerations. Then I heard someone bring up the possibility of incorporation as a way to stop the project."

Handbill Campaign. Within days the newly formed Black Jack Improvement Association was circulating handbills warning residents that the project "may begin a process that completely changes the economic character of the community and may produce a significant devaluation of the homes that presently exist. The crowding of low-income families into such a close space may result in disturbances that require more police support." The handbill urged citizens to write Government officials to voice their opposition. The appeal was very effective: letters inundated HUD and FHA, as well as the area's Senators and Congressmen. Petitions opposing Park View Heights were signed by 6,000 northern St. Louis County citizens (Black Jack has a population estimated at 3,900). Says Mittelstadt: "Ever since that time, we've had trouble convincing people that the flyer didn't describe our project accurately."

Question Mark. The letters and petitions produced a White House cancellation of the project in May, but it was revived five days later when Quigley and Mittelstadt appealed to HUD. With Park View Heights a near reality, Black Jack decided to incorporate. The Interreligious Center tried to block incorporation, but its suit was dismissed. On Sept. 10, 1970. Black Jack became a city. Insisting that the objections were economic, not racial, the new little town held hearings; within six weeks it adopted a zoning regulation that would prevent the construction of homes for more than one family. Two black members of the zoning board--there are eight black families in the town-- voted to approve the regulation. Last January, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney called the new zoning law a "blatant violation of the Constitution and the law." Once again the center, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued: the case is in the first stages of what will certainly be a lengthy trial and appeals process.

The biggest question mark in the controversy at this point is the role of the Federal Government. Secretary Romney favors federal action against Black Jack. But in his Feb. 17 news conference. President Nixon said he did not approve of "forced integration" in the suburbs, though he had ordered HUD and the Justice Department to submit a recommendation on the Black Jack suit "within approximately 30 days." A week after the deadline passed--with no decision from the White House--Nixon told a television interviewer that the Federal Government would not "break up a community from an economic standpoint because those homes are too expensive for some people to move into." Both sides are now waiting for the Administration's formal decision on the case --a decision all agree will likely set the tenor for the suburban legal battles to come all across the U.S.

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