During World War II, tall, stringy J. D. Shelley made good money as a construction worker. His wife Ethel Lee had a job as a maid. Like many other Negro families, the Shelleys scraped and pinched to get every possible nickel into the bank. They had six children. They lived in a savage St. Louis slum, and they ached for quiet, decency and a home of their own.
They finally found it—a two-story house of rust-colored brick on the border between white and Negro districts in midSt. Louis. The place was 50 years old, but it had a lawn and stood...
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