“A Special Curse to Labor”: St. Louis Saloons and River Workers’ Spatial Imaginary

For early Americans, the Mississippi River was a crossroads from East to West. Later, for enslaved Americans, the crossroads could mark the difference between bondage and freedom. At the turn of the twentieth century, many river workers utilized the waterway as a crossroads to varying employment opportunities. My focus on leisure spaces near the St. Louis, Missouri, levee suggests that these laborers developed their own, often shared, understandings of the Mississippi River environment that dovetailed with relationships across a multitude of boundaries, including those connected to race, class, nationality, gender, ability, and sexuality. In some cases, these networks enabled electoral strength and major social action, such as the 1892 Great Rivermen’s Strike. To subdue workers’ power, which hinged on their extensive knowledge of the environment, local leaders in public office and the private sector exercised control over labor and leisure.

How does this expertise complicate existing environmental histories of the Mississippi River levee—in St. Louis and elsewhere along the waterfront? In addition to examining intersections of labor and environment, I analyze the current status of former leisure sites to build on George Lipsitz’s conceptualization of spatial imaginaries. Which palimpsests of networks remain in riverfront communities, and what stories do contemporary environments (“built environments”) present?

This poster will feature interactive elements that display change over time. I'm particularly interested in talking to other educators (in K-12 and university classrooms) about ways of teaching political economies through maps and public records.