This post is a little bit different than the last one – I wanted to share this story because it blew my mind, fascinated Cyrus, and led to great conversations about ghost towns, alternative histories, infrastructure, and white supremacy, all while pigging out on road trip junk food (Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn is the best).
Here’s the story. Last week we took a little road trip. On our way back to Lincoln, in the middle of Kentucky, Google warned there was a major accident on the highway entering Illinois (let me tell you how confusing the geography of this part of the country is, as highways weave in and out of Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri). Google suggested a detour to avoid the accident, and we’re always game for getting off the interstate and seeing new parts of the country, so we merged onto State Highway 51.
We wended our way through the grasslands of Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River, and found ourselves in the town of Cairo, Illinois (said CARE-O, evidently). The girls were sleeping, and Jim, Cyrus and I were a little stunned by what we found. We were in a ghost town. Aside from a newish looking courthouse, there were abandoned buildings all along Cairo’s Main Street. Doors were open. Roofs collapsed. Barbed wire everywhere. As we drove out of Cairo, pondering what could have brought the city to such ruin, we encountered a sign for Future City. A few houses were scattered along the roadside, but nothing else was there. Instead of a ghost town, empty space
Cyrus had lots of questions. Why were all the buildings in Cairo abandoned? Where were all of the people? What was Future City and how did it have such an awesome name? And, where were all of Future City’s people?
The Investigation
With nothing but time and the back roads of Illinois ahead of us, we turned to Wikipedia and the Google. For the next few hours, we pieced together what we could find of the story of Cairo and Future City – and it’s not anything like what we expected.
As Wikipedia tells us, Charles Dickens visited Cairo in 1842, and was unimpressed.[5] The city would serve as his prototype for the nightmare City of Eden in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit. The city had its ups and downs throughout the 1800s, buoyed by the promise of location at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, but constantly upstaged by its more attractive northern cousin, Chicago. And…the city kept flooding, which made it a risky proposition for economic development
If you do a cursory reading of the top hits on Google, like we did as we made our way toward St. Louis, you can’t help but notice the fact that racial violence just keeps appearing in the stories about Cairo. The history of Cairo is one of mobsters running liquor, the highest arrest rates in the state, Blacks being frozen out of industry and refused good paying jobs, and structural racism trading places with out and out violence. In the early 1900s, 38% of Cairo’s population – 5000 residents – were African American (fun fact - this is because Cairo was originally a stop on the Underground Railroad! Cairo, you could have been so cool!). A 1909 lynching (one of the most violent in US history – the horror of the night is told in excruciating detail on Wikipedia), and routine racial harassment and violence by police against Black residents, led to constant conflict, which reached a head in the 1960s. The town’s white population formed a community policing brigade called the White Hats, which went exactly how you’d expect. Cairo’s economy collapsed, leading to a massive decrease in population – only about 2300 residents (72% African American), live in the city today.
But…What about Future City?
Interestingly, the discussions of racism in Cairo never mention Future City. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Future City: “The town was founded as a suburb of Cairo in the early 1900s and was populated almost entirely by African Americans. Much of the town was damaged during a flood in 1912 but was quickly rebuilt. However, the town was once again devastated in 1913 during the Great Flood of 1913 with every building in town being damaged or moved during the flood.[2] Only a few residents remain in Future City today.”
Putting this in conversation with what we know about Cairo, it seems clear that these stories are linked – but how are they told separately? And why? That’s what Cyrus and I wanted to find out.
During the great floods of 1912 and 1913, residents of Future City lost everything – their homes, their stores, and their city. But how? We found the answer here in this paragraph from an archive on floods hosted by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center:
“Unfortunately, most residents from Future City were needed to reinforce the levees in Cairo which were damaged in the 1912 Mississippi River flood. This was a daunting task which had residents working day and night to protect the business and industrial districts of Cairo from the flood. These efforts were not in vain; most of the city of Cairo was saved. The same cannot be said for Future City, which many suggest was affected negatively by all the flood control measures in Cairo.”
After we read all of this, my family of historical detectives scratched our collective heads. How could we put it into a narrative that made sense? And why were these two stories told in parallel, instead of as an interconnected history? And how could we re-write the narrative so that the histories were interwoven? Finally, if “many suggest” that Future City was sacrificed to save Cairo, why isn’t that story being told? - We had questions.
We repackaged the story of the two towns like this: At the turn of the century, as violence increased against the Black residents of the town, they decided to found their own city, Future City. Although Future City had grocery stores, restaurants, and shops, they were still interdependent on Cairo – Cairo relied on labor provided by the residents of Future City, who needed the economic resources of the larger community.
When the floods happened in 1912 and 1913, in the middle of a time of intense racial strife, including the lynching and another attempted lynching, the people of Future City should have been able to save their communities – but they could not. First, because they were busy building levees to save Cairo, and second because the flood prevention techniques that were used to save the white city in fact washed away the Black town.
And this is white supremacy at work – the labor being put to work to preserve white property, the Army Corps of Engineers designing plans that sacrifice Black neighborhoods for whites, and then telling these stories as though Cairo is the only PLACE – the only marked place on a map is one of disrepair, instead of the place of growth that Black people built, only to have it washed away.
Why Future City Matters
So – why are we writing about this and thinking about this? I want my kids to think about shadows – histories and places and people that could have thrived if it weren’t for white supremacy. In my race and politics class, I teach the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, which tells story after story of how Black communities, jobs, labor, fortunes were erased by white laws and white capital. Those aren’t conversations my kids will fully understand yet, but Cyrus does understand that the Army Corps of Engineers had a choice to build levees to help Future City or Cairo, and they chose Cairo – and then Black people from Future City helped build and secure those levees, even though it meant sacrificing their town. And he understands that violence against Black people (we didn’t talk about lynching yet, but we will when he’s older) made it hard for them to live full lives in Cairo, which is why they moved to Future City to begin with – for a chance at a better life. And if he can understand both of those things, then he can understand the central conflicts that make up the 19th and 20th century. Like Heather McGhee writes in The Sum of Us, there are real costs to this racial strife for all people - the white citizens of Cairo, initially saved by the Black neighbors in future city, sacrificed the wellness of their community on the alter of white supremacy half a century later. The ghost town that is Cairo is a living testament to the costs of whiteness.
This concludes our Road Trip mystery!
Coming up next – a reader requested me to write about how to talk about the 215 children who were found dead at the indigenous school in Canada, so I’ve been contemplating that. Have a good topic? Do you know more stuff about Cairo and Future City? Let me know!
What We’re Reading
Last week I finished Patti Smith’s Just Kids, which recounts her relationship with Robert Maplethorpe and life in New York City in the 1970s. I found the book fascinating (who doesn’t want to hear about hanging out with Janis Joplin??) but at times felt lost in a sea of names from New York’s art scene. This was my favorite line, from her time in the Chelsea Hotel: “I was thinking about what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dali. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: "You are like a crow, a gothic crow.”
I’m reading Shuggie Bain right now, which I’m finding an excruciatingly difficult read (alll the triggers) but the book is also stunningly beautiful. Next up will be something light and fluffier.
I just got Cyrus Stamped (for Kids), which is a book about antiracism, but he hasn’t really started reading it yet (It’s summer, Mom) - stay tuned for his review when he does pick it up.