In July 1964, activists Percy Green and Richard Daly scaled the unfinished north leg of the Gateway Arch, climbing 125 feet up a construction ladder to protest hiring practices that excluded Black workers from working on the monument.
The protest came days after President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"Percy Green was challenging that this was a federal monument that was rising, government jobs needed to be hiring Black workers as well," said Andrew Wanko, a public historian at the Missouri History Museum. "He was up there for more than four hours."
Green and Daily's protest moved National Park Service officials to pressure construction companies to hire African American workers and contractors for the 630-foot structure.
Two years after Green and Daly's climb, protests broke out after white laborers staged a walkout in protest of the hiring of Black plumbers Elijah Smith and Oliver Parker for work in the Gateway Arch visitors center bathrooms.
The two protests led the U.S. Department of Justice to file its first pattern of practice lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Wanko noted.
"They got the St. Louis building trades to sign an agreement stating that they would end all practices that were discriminatory," he said. "It was the first time the federal government had ever enforced equal opportunity employment anywhere in the country."
Green and Daly's famous climb is just one of several important civil rights moments that occurred on the grounds of Gateway Arch National Park — particularly on its north side.
"I think of the north leg of the Arch as the civil rights leg of the Arch," said St. Louis historian and architect John Guenther, citing another instance at the site nearly 120 years prior.
In 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom in St. Louis Circuit Court. The first two trials took place at the Old Courthouse. The state ruled in favor of the Scotts' freedom. In 1854, however, their enslaver, John Sandford, appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. That third trial was held in the Papan Building on First Street, and it overturned the lower court's decision and ruled in favor of Sandford. The case became one of the most important ever tried in the country.
"When [Dred and Harriet Scott] were denied their freedom, it went up to the Supreme Court, and that was the precipitator to the Civil War," Guenther said. "It's a very, very important location in our country for history."
Guenther and Wanko joined Monday's St. Louis on the Air to talk about the monument's place in American history, its influence on international architecture and labor movements and why the Arch is still considered a modern engineering marvel today. They also explored what existed on the riverfront before the monument was constructed.
Other highlights from the conversation include:
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Citizens Nonpartisan Committee found evidence of fraud in the public vote to clear the riverfront for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and monument. They filed a lawsuit over the more than 46,000 suspicious ballots. The case was ultimately dismissed by the Missouri Supreme Court.
- One of the 172 entries for the design of the riverfront's monument to Western expansion would have resulted in a "Joker over Gotham City kind of vibe," Wanko said.
- The memorial park competition originally included the Missouri and Illinois sides of the Mississippi River. Budget-related issues changed that: The Gateway Geyser fountain at Malcolm W. Martin Park in the Metro East was designed to mirror the 630-foot-tall Arch with water.
- An actuarial firm predicted that 13 people would be killed in the Arch's construction. No one perished.
- The Arch has inspired satire — and daring. A caller described scooting up, then down the nearly completed Arch with his college friends on Labor Day weekend in 1965. Two-and-a half decades later, a man named John Vincent suction-cupped his way to the Arch's top and parachuted to the ground.
To hear what the St. Louis riverfront looked like before it was cleared, how the Arch's design influenced a renowned building in Sydney, Australia, and why the monument's history is a complex symbol of loss, optimism, ingenuity and struggle, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube or click the play button below.
"St. Louis on the Air" brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Darrious Varner is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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