Eads Bridge

When she is eleven, a hard thing happens across the river.

In the summer of nineteen seventeen, the city of East St. Louis is torn by a racial massacre, and Black families flee over the Eads Bridge into St. Louis with what they can carry.

Josephine sees them come.

She will speak about it for the rest of her life.

And she learns early that laughter is a kind of shelter.

When she is eleven, a hard thing happens across the river.

In the summer of nineteen seventeen, the city of East St. Louis is torn by a racial massacre, and Black families flee over the Eads Bridge into St. Louis with what they can carry.

Josephine sees them come.

Scared the shit out of me.

He was going 95 miles an hour going over the Eads Bridge, where there's potholes 10 feet deep, and he's on his phone.

I go, "You need to fucking put that goddamn thing down now." And he's laughing, slamming on the brakes, like, fuck, bam.

[laughs]

Okay.

We were told the history of the Eads Bridge.

Then we went up by the... stand span and then oops that's enough turn back around and

that was about it and then the poplar street bridge is actually the bernard f dickman bridge is that right