What’s Kinloch?

This was written by Maggie, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

The ArchCity Defenders concluded their racial justice film series with a topic close to home – Kinloch, the neighborhood right next to Ferguson, near the airport. This city has been greatly affected by Lambert Airport privatization, mergers, race relations and institutional racism, and the Ferguson unrest.

 This first film was a short documentary entitled The Kinloch Doc, directed and produced by Alana Marie. In it, she focuses on the airport buyout and city merger that greatly impacted this small city, which was Missouri’s first Black one. The film expresses the voices of current and former residents, scholars, and city officials, including Justine Blue, who explained, “I miss the sense of community, I miss home, I miss being what we had.” For more information about the director and producer, Alana Marie identities as a storyteller, which led her to make this short, screened in the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, the St. Louis International Film Festival, and the Benton Park Film Festival. Marie is now working on finishing the documentary at full-length. Additionally, she is involved with college access advocacy, helping first-generation students and underrepresented young people go to college; works in neighborhoods that have been forgotten or abandoned as a community organizer; and also writes in many online publications.

Directed by Jane Gillooly, who grew up in Ferguson, Where the Pavement Ends is an 85-minute film that explains the truth about Kinloch. After Michael Brown’s death by a white police officer in Ferguson in 2014, Ferguson became nationally known. However, this town used to be a sundown town and whites-only, which bordered Kinloch, now practically abandoned. The documentary involves interviews from residents of both towns and their stories about them. In the 1960s, there were physical barriers to block the white town of Ferguson to the Black town of Kinloch, which resulted in legal disputes and cases. Almost fifty years later, race relations remain the forefront of these towns. 

Following the showings of these two documentaries, the director of The Kinloch Doc, Marie, moderated a panel of people connected to Kinloch, including Felicia Pulliam, JD, community leader; Dr. John A. Wright, Sr., historian and author; Deborah Rice-Carter, community liaison and market manager; and Dorothy Squires, former Kinloch resident and also in Where the Pavement Ends. Pulliam is the CEO and founder of Create Community LLC and helped co-found ONE Ferguson. With a B.A. in political science and sociology from Xavier University and having her Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School, she has led as an educator, administrator, and community developer as well as in diversity, equity, and inclusion, talking to groups across the country. Dr. Wright has lived in St. Louis for most of life and used to work as an educator, everywhere from a school teacher to a superintendent of multiple schools, including the Kinloch School District when it merged with Berkeley and Ferguson-Florissant. He also participated in the board at Our Lady of the Angels School in Kinloch. Lastly, Dr. Wright has written 15 books of history on the local level, with two about Kinloch. Rice-Carter graduated from the 2018 Neighborhood Fellowship through University of Missouri St. Louis Extension and holds community activist degrees in gerontology and health science. She has lived in Ferguson, now on the border with Kinloch, for almost three decades, and she married someone from Kinloch. In addition, Rice-Carter serves as the liaison and market manager for Earthdance Organic Farm School. Squires has lived in Kinloch before for a long time, graduating from Dunbar Elementary and Kinloch High School. She went to college at the University of Missouri St. Louis and earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in early childhood and elementary education. She has been married for over 50 years, living in Hazelwood, and has had three children and now is a grandmother to two. Overall, the panelists spoke about their backgrounds and research, with an overarching theme that “Kinloch has happened everywhere.”