Mill Creek Valley, a bustling neighborhood in St. Louis’ Midtown area, was a center for Black culture within St. Louis until its destruction in 1959. And despite history’s best efforts to erase it, the Missouri History Museum opened its “Mill Creek: Black Metropolis” exhibit with celebrations Nov. 15 – 16, 2025, to unearth and celebrate its history.

Mill Creek, as described in the beginning of the exhibit, housed 20,000 citizens, 95% of them Black. The self-contained community boasted over 800 businesses, 43 churches, three theaters and Douglass University, the second law school in the U.S. to admit African American students. A space smaller than Forest Park operated as its own thriving city.

The exhibit curator, Gwen Moore, began her research on Mill Creek not with the intention of creating an exhibit, but because she simply wanted to know what happened to the community where she and her family grew up. She had remembered articles on Mill Creek misrepresenting its inhabitants and culture.

“It sounded nothing like the community that I remember. It was always described in negative terms. The people that lived there, they didn’t have names, they didn’t have faces. They were just slum dwellers,” Moore said. 

To her, it was home; to the press, it was St. Louis’ “number one eyesore.”

The exhibit displays Mill Creek residents’ household items such as artwork, games and clothing. It describes several different businesses, churches and schools in the community and provides biographies of prominent figures from the area.

Maps and comparison photos detail how the City Planning Commission raised millions of dollars to use the power of eminent domain, the government’s ability to purchase private property and reutilize it for the public – to take Mill Creek and remove it from the map and from history. Demolition began in 1959; the community was leveled and desolate by 1961. Now, fewer than a dozen of the original 5,000 buildings remain.

“We’re lucky we did as well as we did,” Moore said. “I think it shows the brilliance of Black people, that we were able to create what we created in that community, when you consider all the barriers of what we had to face.”

SLU played a role in the destruction that took homes and businesses off the map. Reverend Paul Reinert purchased part of the land in 1955 while he was vice president of SLU. Chaifetz Arena now sits where Waring Elementary once was.

Vivian Gibson, author of “The Last Children of Mill Creek,” spoke on the importance of SLU students understanding this history.

“It’s important to … look into how it happened. How did [Mill Creek] go from 20,000 Black people segregated there, to less than 20,000 mostly white students?” Gibson said. “I want [SLU students] to understand that, so that when they finish college and they’re running the country, they have a sense of how these things happen and how they impact people.”

Gibson also served as the executive producer for the documentary “Children of Mill Creek: When We Were There,” which was directed by SLU graduate student Khalid Abdulqaadir.

Many of the exhibit’s visitors were former Mill Creek residents or descendants of them. Two sisters, Bettie Battle-Turner and Carol Battle-Barnes, recalled the significance of growing up in Mill Creek.

“Families were attracted to the area because they knew that they could get support from one another, and I think that that was the key to the stability of the community,” Battle-Barnes said. “You helped someone else. You were able to pull one another up.”

Battle-Turner described a sense of connectedness and safety. 

“It was really a village. Our lawyers were there, our doctors were there. Everything we needed was right there,” Battle-Turner said. 

The sisters said that seeing the exhibit allowed them to reconnect with other Mill Creek residents and pass their knowledge on to the next generation. Battle-Turner encountered five people who recognized the name of her father’s store, and she was able to show her daughter certain parts of her history for the first time.

“I asked her to come to see the history, because I couldn’t drive down to Mill Creek and say, ‘This is my house.’ I couldn’t do that. I had no choice,” Battle-Turner said.

The opening weekend celebration for the exhibit featured two showings of Abdulqaadir’s documentary, followed by panels with both Gibson and Abdulqaadir. Other events from the celebration included make-and-take crafts, musical performances from The Legend Singers and Jazz Edge and a visual recreation of the streets of Mill Creek made by Washington University architecture students.

The weekend represented not only a rekindling of past memories, but also a goal for future generations and communities.

“I wanted people today to start rethinking Black communities, because we still stigmatize Black communities,” Moore said. “People were telling me how their friends and neighbors are afraid to come into the city. We know that’s colored language. They’re afraid of Black lives, and that’s because they’re still stereotyping Black communities.”

Moore encouraged attendees to look back upon Mill Creek not with nostalgia, but with admiration for what they accomplished and a vow never to let it happen again.

“Mill Creek: Black Metropolis” is part of the Missouri History Museum’s larger African American history program series. The exhibit will be available until July 7, 2026, at no cost.