Data Collection (Archival Research)

 Alvin G. Fields Collection at SIUE Archives

Beautification Committee, 1958-1968

  • The town was trying to hire people for the committee and they were making guidelines for the jobs. Under the duties of the sub-committee chairman of alleys, they were expected to survey “trees overhanging or blocking the alley, also remove list trees that are dead and should be removed”. For the duties of the subcommittee chairman of streets, they were expected to survey the “condition of trees- trimming needed;dead trees,and planting”. The duties of the sub-committee chairman of open spaces was that “all open spaces, including parks, should be beautified”
  • The agenda for beautification states that the town wanted beautification projects such as scenery for riverfront and standard beautification areas completed. 
  • They wanted the liter cans to be displayed to the public. They did not specify the intention behind this, but I believe it is to hold the community accountable and bring this problem to their attention. They wanted community to be aware of their influence on the city as a way to motivate them to take care of their community.
  • Beautification projects “FALL CLEAN UP MONTH” campaign.
  • Beautification commission projects were made with the goal of making open spaces into playgrounds and passive areas. They did a lot of advertising, getting local businesses, radio stations, and tv to advertise for this. They also hired volunteers. 
  • They had a parade to kick off the fall clean up month. They had extravagant plans for floats and a line up for who would be in the parade. They carefully chose these floats to appeal to the community audience.
  • Whichever precinct had the most cleanest area was given an award ceremony and dinner. This was a big incentive for community members to act in the fall clean up month, as they could get a fancy dinner and reward for their actions. The award was called the beautification award, which they said the purpose was to “serve as an implement towards community betterment”. 
  • This project was geared towards low income communities, which explains a lot of why they chose the activities they did. They knew these communities were not used to big parades and award dinners, so it was a huge incentive. 
  • The clean up campaign began on October 7, 1966.
  • Above were slogans used within the Beautification project efforts. These were used to motivate people to join them and clean their community. It is very washed out, but one of the slogans is “plant trees”. This is very helpful in connecting to our project, because the government did at one point see the issue with the lack of trees and care for the community. 
  • Above documents are goals that the steering committee had for the beautification committee to enact with their project to “beautify” the city of East St. Louis. An objective that stands out is to “encourage family activity rendering assistance whenever possible in the improvement of the individual lots or projects. Also, the objective of “cooperate and carry out with city wide, state, and national agencies large scale projects beyond the scope of neighborhood groups”. I feel like these objectives are very relevant for our project as we want to connect with community, and as Heartlands organization wants to collaborate with this government.
  • This above document is a sub-section of the memo above this document. I think it is beneficial how they break the sections down. Something that is beneficial to our project is their goal of “establishing demonstration homes to show how this can be done and plants they can use” and “ supply information or sources of plant material, time of year and methods of establishing them”. The committee wanted to teach the community how to support themselves by planting plants and trees.
  • They summarized this information below from a beautification committee meeting of 1967. 

– It was suggested that:

  1. Younger people be made interested; consequently do the bulk of the work.
  2. A questionnaire be made up and sent to the Metro-East Journal for the opinion of the general public on beautification. 
  • Above is a photo from the archives which was a plan for a town center to implement on Liberty street and Paradise street. This is really interesting, as you can see they wanted community to have resources. The ones that stood out to me are the food market and the farmer’s market. I also found it interesting how they planned to line the streets with trees. 

In this picture above it shows examples of some projects that the city government was willing to include to connect the community with outreach programs. They gave way to improve the city due to previous injuries. 

In this archive it talks about the cutbacks received in the previous community programs causing St.Louis to lose a lot of resources due to some of Johnson’s new ideas. 

 Park District: East St.Louis 

  • “For your information, Jones Park is under the supervision of the East St. Louis Park District, which is a separate taxing body, created by the State of Illinois. They have their own Commissioners, their own Police Force, and they have their own rules. The City of East St. Louis has no authority whatsoever over  the Parks in East St. Louis.”
  • “ The State is going to plant multiflora roses in Grand Marais Park.”