By Antonio D. French
Filed Sunday, January 22 at 7:34 AM
The organizers of the nearly 100 year-old Annie Malone Parade have decided to take the annual event from its north St. Louis home and move it downtown.
Richard L. King, the director of the Annie Malone Children & Family Services Center, said the organization is "growing and we want to position ourselves as a community-wide celebration, open to all who want to support children and families." King just took his position last year after Jean Patterson-Neal retired after more than 30 years of leading the center.
The parade has always been in north St. Louis' Ville neighborhood since the organization first started there in the late 19th Century. Besides being a northside tradition, it is one of the biggest black parades in all of America. But no longer.
The City of St. Louis and Mr. King have given up on the idea of inviting white city residents to share in the annual northside event which drew more than 100,000 people last year. Instead, northsiders are forced to give up our largest annual event so that others can feel more welcome.
Perhaps the Soulard Mardi Gras organizers will do the same thing and opt to move their celebration further north? Maybe they've noticed that, for some reason or another, black St. Louisans don't seem to feel welcome in the crowd of 100,000 drunk white partiers.
Mr. King and those that he is seeking to attract to his new parade should know that others were always invited to our Natural Bridge parade. They've just chosen not to come.
What can you do? Call Annie Malone at (314) 531-0120.
Then call the city's northside aldermen and ask them what they think about their largest annual gathering being taken away. Reach the Board of Aldermen at (314) 622-3287.
Then call Mayor Francis Slay and ask him why he thinks it's a good idea to ask northsiders to give up their parade and what he ever did to invite others to come to it? Call (314) 622-3201 or send a fax to (314) 622-4061.
3 Comments:
There are parades held in Dogtown, on The Hill, and on South Grand. If these events aren't moving downtown, then The Ville shouldn't lose its history either.
7:00 AM, January 23, 2006
Yeah, True, but I dont hear about killings and beatings in those parades either. Jean Patterson-Neal was a nut,
9:08 PM, January 23, 2006
True. But you don't hear of a lot of things that go on in south St. Louis, south County, west County, and beyond.
And I believe the weapon of choice has been fists, beer cans and mace at Soulard's Mardi Gras (http://rftstl.com/issues/1999-03-03/news/letters.html).
And I venture to guess that if the Annie Malone parade had the same kind of police presence (see http://www.riverfronttimes.com/Issues/1999-02-24/columns2.html), there would be as safe an enviroment for the children and parents that attend the northside event.
5:38 PM, January 24, 2006
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