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St. Louis doesn't really attract many young Black professionals from elsewhere though. It can be harder for transplants to find their niche and break into social circles in more insular cities where a big percentage of the local population was born and raised there. With only a few exceptions, this is an issue in the Midwest in general and less so in the urban South along the Eastern seaboard. Compare St. Louis to Baltimore, which is a close peer to St. Louis in several respects, in this regard and the differences are pretty clear.
This is spot on. Apparently I can’t give you anymore rep points right now.
I have a cousin who transferred to St. Louis a little over a year ago, and after about a month in, she started mentioning what you said in your second sentence.
The few Black transplants who do come here to Cincinnati for school or employment reasons usually end up leaving after a few years. Most cite the insular nature of the residents due to most people being born and raised here and the lack of entertainment and cultural amenities catered to the Black professional class.
I should also add Newark, NJ and Jersey City. Lots of black people but lacking black professional scene. Weird because I had this theory before that Newark might develop a scene as NYC gets more pricey!
They also have a subway (The PATH) that could take them to nyc!
black professionals from NJ go to NYC or DC. There is a small black professional community however.
If they do, they tend to live in Woodlawn, the Union Street area and the GE Realty Plot. For instance, here is an article about Woodlawn from several years back: https://dailygazette.com/article/201.../0704_woodlawn
A lot of the smaller southern cities have this problem.
Jackson MS
Birmingham AL
New Orleans LA
A few others I think may have this issue:
Indianapolis IN
Rockford IL
For its size, Jackson doesn't do too bad actually. A capital city with HBCUs tends to do statistically better than other cities when it comes to Black people.
There’s no argument for NYC. Lots of black professionals in both Brooklyn and Uptown Manhattan.
Philadelphia also has a good amount of black professionals as well.
In my experience the city that lacked black professionals to me was Miami. I was going to add Charleston since many of the professionals in the city looked very white but I only spent a day there so I’ll stick with Miami!
I have to respectfully disagree. Metro Miami and Broward County close by have many African American professional workers who are highly educated. I know because I worked down there. I met many excellent African American engineering workers and students down there. I also saw many established African American professors in STEM - far more than the midwest or southwest. Indeed, some of theme were Caribbean Islanders (Haiti, Jamaica, etc.). But many were also local.
And Affirmative Action was outlawed in FL, so these African Americans in STEM made it without that policy. They had legitimate talent. I was happy to see that as a Native American engineer.
Most cities within the South DON'T have this "problem", quite the opposite, really.
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