A President Visits East St. Louis: The Racialized Politics of Market Talk, Enterprise Zones, and Abandonment, 1980–2010

Local officials had played no part in formulating Clinton's economic development proposals. Bill Clinton Visits East St. Louis On August 6, 1992, as candidate for president, Clinton and Senator Albert A. Gore, his choice for vice president, spoke and replied to questions in front of an audience...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998) Vol. 116; no. 1; pp. 56 - 91
Main Authors Biles, Roger, Rose, Mark H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Springfield University of Illinois Press 01.04.2023
Illinois State Historical Society
Subjects
1980s (Decade) AD
1990s (Decade) AD
21st century AD
Abandonment of property
Audiences
Cities
Clinton, Bill
Economic aspects
Enterprise culture
History
Journalists
Local economy
Manufacturing
Markets (Economics)
Political aspects
Political leadership
Presidents
Race relations
Secondary education
Sewage disposal
Social aspects
Unemployment
US State History
United States
United States > US
Illinois
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Summary:Local officials had played no part in formulating Clinton's economic development proposals. Bill Clinton Visits East St. Louis On August 6, 1992, as candidate for president, Clinton and Senator Albert A. Gore, his choice for vice president, spoke and replied to questions in front of an audience gathered at the East St. Louis Senior High School gymnasium. (Hannibal was best known as Mark Twain's boyhood home.) By 1992, however, Hannibal, like East St. Louis, was another Mississippi River city that had expanded decades earlier only to experience a prolonged period of decline as part of the shuttering of manufacturing firms and an accompanying slowdown in railroad and river barge traffic. Sperling characterized the president's trip as “an economic mission in our own backyard,” much like the trade missions that federal and state officials made to non-white, impoverished nations. 2 By anyone's set of calculations, East St. Louis's economic recovery appeared a longshot.
ISSN:1522-1067
2328-3335
DOI:10.5406/23283335.116.1.05