Book about Raymond Tucker, a mayor who transformed St. Louis, hits history shelves
If a hard-to-shop-for name on your Christmas gift list happens to be a St. Louis history buff, political scientist Andrew J. Theising has stepped up with a new book.
"Mid-Mod Mayor: How Raymond Tucker Shaped St. Louis" hit the market last week — and will help explain why Tucker Boulevard isn't called 12th Street anymore.
Tucker was St. Louis mayor from 1953 to 1965, which at the time made him and Henry Kiel, 1913 to 1925, the only mayors to serve three terms. (That mark would later be matched by Vincent Schoemehl Jr., then surpassed by Francis G. Slay, who served four terms.)
Holder of a mechanical engineering degree, Tucker first came to prominence as the city's "Smoke Commissioner" in the 1930s, working to reduce the city's notorious air pollution caused by burning coal.
Then in 1953, Tucker won the mayoral race by beating Mark D. Eagleton, whose son, Thomas, would go on to become a longtime U.S. senator.
Theising, a political science professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and visiting professor at Washington University, said Tucker's tenure was a boon period for St. Louis.
Among the landmark civic achievements that took place included the start of construction on the Gateway Arch; securing an NFL franchise and keeping the baseball Cardinals in the city, at a new downtown stadium; and the blossoming of the interstate highway system.
Another seminal event was the razing of Mill Creek Valley, which forced many of its residents, almost exclusively Black, to relocate to the ill-conceived and ill-fated Pruitt-Igoe housing project.
In an interview, Theising said the retrospective criticism of the Mill Creek situation has shrouded the fact that Tucker was on the cutting edge of civil rights in the 1950s.
Theising said Tucker, a devout Catholic, "embraced the position" first espoused here by Archbishop John J. Ritter, who in 1947 ordered the desegregation of Catholic schools and declared that "racial discrimination is a sin."
"He pushed for public accommodation laws from when he first took office until the Board of Aldermen finally passed it in 1962," Theising said.
Theising noted, however, that Tucker's bedrock pragmatism led him to believe that others would also recognize existing prejudices and move to change them without prodding.
"And that is where he fell behind," Theising said.
Tucker lost his bid for a fourth term in 1965 to Alfonso J. Cervantes. He died in 1970 and was laid to rest out of Sts. Mary and Joseph Church in the Carondelet neighborhood, where he lived his entire life.
The book has numerous archival photos from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other local periodicals, as well as material from the Tucker family.
Published by Bartholomew Chambers Media, the book is available now at Amazon ($32.95; $22.95) and will be in local stores this Thanksgiving weekend.
Political correspondent/columnist
