Social justice and discrimination are themes our book club considered in many past discussions of novels like Beloved, Huckleberry Finn, Little Fires Everywhere, The Lowland, There, There andWhere the Crawdads Sing, as well as recent discussions of histories like Prairie Firesand Fighting Words. 

In June we tackled Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States. Johnson shows how social injustice and discrimination interweave with capitalism. He pulls those threads painfully tight. Beginning in the era of Lewis and Clarke, says Johnson, specific tactics perpetrated against native Americans predicted similar injustices perpetrated against American Blacks in the 19th, 20thand 21stcentury. Free enterprise (and greed) was often implicated in these injustices. 

A recent example in the book hit close to home. When I was an infant my family lived in the St Louis suburb of Kirkwood. My parents recalled those Kirkwood years with great fondness, and some of my high school pals bought their first homes there.  Johnson explains that in 1992, smart real estate developers recognized that if Kirkwood annexed an adjacent low-income Black community (Meacham Park), they could obtain generous tax credits. When Kirkwood residents voted to annex Meacham Park, its residents thought this would mean better schools and other improved social services. Instead, Blacks were harassed out of town, and developers tore down about half of their “blighted” community to build a shopping mall. Johnson argues that Meacham Park’s experience is just one of countless examples in the 19thand 20thcenturies, in which American Indians and Blacks, comfortable in their communities, were displaced to less desirable locations. The most horrifying example was the East St. Louis Massacre of 1917 – a story on the same scale as the Tulsa/ Greenwood massacre of 1921. 

Johnson’s book was a heartbreaking read, and in our discussion, we shared feelings of guilt, confusion, and concern, as we tied his history of St. Louis to George Floyd’s killing, Black Lives Matter, Boston’s history of racism and intolerance, and the white supremacy that has re-emerged in recent years. Those present gave careful consideration to Johnson’s interpretation of our nation’s history, and together we discussed small and large steps each of us can take toward social justice. 

Thoughtful concern is what I cherish about the women in our book club. I am grateful to be part of the Esplanade community

Janis Gogan