Alversia Pettigrew
In recognition of Black History Month, this issue of the E-Journal salutes Alversia Pettigrew, the author of a book about “The Neck,” the Black neighborhood in Independence in which she was raised. The “Neck” was demolished in the 1960s when the city implemented Urban Renewal. In her book Alversia shares her experiences growing up Black in Independence, and recalls a vanished neighborhood which was once home to generations of African Americans.
Alversia Pettigrew pictured during an interview.
Photo courtesy of Irene Baltrusaitis
By Gloria Smith and Irene Baltrusaitis
“Well, I came into this world on a cold Tuesday night on February 20, 1945, at 10:30 p.m. My mother, Jewel, gave birth to me at the Florence Home for Unwed Girls. And, I guess this is where it all began!” Alversia wrote in her autobiography “Memories of a Neck Child,” first published in 2000.
Alversia’s mother did not want to give her up for adoption, so they went to live with her mother’s Aunt Louise and Uncle Oscar Irvin. Alversia called them Nanny and Daddy. Today, Alversia lives on Delaware Street in Independence and can look out from her front deck over McCoy Park, the site of her old neighborhood.
In “The Neck” Alversia describes her youth with fondness, calling it trying, but more wholesome than it is for children today.
Alversia’s (far right) immediate family were (from left) her mother Jewel, Uncle Oscar Irvin and Aunt Louise Irvin.
Photo courtesy of Alversia Pettigrew
“I feel like I had my village,” Alversia says of her upbringing. “The older ladies took a special interest in us (the children). And we had respect for them…it was always ‘yes ma’am’, 'no ma’am’. I was the little ‘Pollyanna’ of the neighborhood. Once I got my bike I would ride around to the aunts’ houses. There was no blood relation, but that’s what we children called them. I had a basket on my bicycle and would ride by their houses to ask if they needed anything from the Liberty Street Market (Liberty and Mill streets).
“I was an only child,” she says when explaining why she got so much “love and attention” at home.
“I also had my church family. Everything was interconnected. My third and fourth grade teacher’s grandfather had once been the minister of my church,” Alversia said. School and the St. Paul A.M.E. Church were the center of her universe outside her neighborhood.
“Today we are disjointed, we’re all so separate and more into self. We rate self more than community,” which Alversia says is partly the cause of our divisive society today.
A very young Alversia is pictured here with the most important women in her life (from left) Grandmother Mattie, Great Aunt Julie, Aunt Maxine, and her mother Jewel.
Photo courtesy of Alversia Pettigrew
When she started school, Alversia attended Young School, an all Black school named for Hiram Young. He was formerly an enslaved person who bought his freedom and became prosperous building wagons for settlers heading west along the trails originating in Independence. History books of the time did not mention slavery or Black history. “While we did learn about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington, we never knew who Hiram Young was, nor why our school had his name,” she said.
When in the seventh grade, Alversia was among the first Black students to attend the Independence Junior High School and then graduated William Chrisman High School in 1962. Her experiences during these years were that the “students were never a problem,” but the occasional teacher made insulting racial slurs. But most teachers were caring and some remain in her heart to this day.
Alversia believes her musical abilities helped her fit in during high school, where she was in the choir. She was the first black student in Chrisman to audition and gain acceptance into the elite Christian A Capella Choir.
Before she got her bicycle, Alversia had this tricycle. It was built from parts of a tricycle and bicycle and made by her grandfather Primus Clark. He worked in a foundry.
Photo courtesy of Alversia Pettigrew
She also played the piano, studying with a teacher in Kansas City, the trip for which took an hour and a half. Because of the long bus ride, she began lessons with a teacher who lived on South Grand, near the Community of Christ Church Auditorium. After walking to her house for three weeks, the teacher suggested she study elsewhere when her neighbors complained about seeing a Black person in their neighborhood.
After high school, Alversia attended college two years at the Resident Center for Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri). Her first job was at the Independence Sanitarium and Hospital (now Centerpoint Medical Center), where she was a clerk-typist, eventually advancing to transcriptionist. She spent her career there, retiring in 2007 as a medical records supervisor.
Memories of trips to the Independence Square are “bittersweet” for Alversia. She enjoyed walking with her mother and Nanny. “We were free to buy anything we needed, although we were always under the watchful eye of the salespersons. Because, by being Black, we gave off the signal that we might steal something.”
During the 1960s when the City of Independence implemented Urban Renewal “The Neck” was razed and she and her family moved to North Spring, where they were the first to integrate the neighborhood. Alversia lived there until she married Lorenza Evan Pettigrew in 1979 and moved into the home he had built in 1966 on Delaware.
The Young School was the only school for African-American children in Independence, Mo. The school was named after Hiram Young who became a freed person and was the leading manufacturer of wagons for the Oregon Trail.
[General Photo Collection, PHM 24105], The Jackson County Historical Society, Aug. 4, 1938
In her book, Alversia recounted a story of when husband was watering the lawn in shortly after building his Delaware Street home. President Harry Truman walked by and welcomed him to the neighborhood. “Mr. Pettigrew, glad to have you for a neighbor,” Alversia wrote. So much had changed since she was a child and the children were told to “get back down there where you belong, if they were seen on Delaware Street.”
“If you stand in the front doorway of the (Young) school and look back towards what is now the Independence Square, you’ll have a marvelous view. It was the view of town we had every day, a town where we didn’t belong, not totally. But today is different. Some of the old ways hang on, but mostly life is better,” said Alversia Pettigrew in a story for the January/February 2022 edition of Missouri Life
Gloria Smith is a former JCHS President.
Irene Baltrusaitis is the secretary of the JCHS Board.