St. Louis was the pivot of the free states and slave states and the border of the settled East and frontier West. Sharon Hartman Strom draws on disparate and previously untapped sources to weave the personal and public lives of women and both free and enslaved African Americans into city history.

Strom’s analysis shows how the embrace of Protestantism by people of color sparked a vigorous antislavery movement. During the Civil War, several prominent citizens served in the Lincoln cabinet and Congress while Missouri’s decision to remain in the Union allowed the city to find its own ways to end slavery and grant citizenship to African Americans. Years later, biracial movements to advance equality collapsed when the East St. Louis race riot of 1917 affirmed that racist attitudes and structures still dominated the region.

Illuminating and nuanced, Becoming St. Louis offers a diverse social and political history of the city during a transformative era.