A marker placed Friday with collaboration between city, neighborhood and historic preservation supporters stands alone in the 600 block of Lafayette Street, where a self-contained community lived, worked and played.
The Foot grew from the 1860s until federal urban renewal claimed the majority of the homes and businesses in the 1960s.
Recently, all but two of the neighborhood's historic properties that survived the first razing were taken in the Missouri Department of Transportation's Whitton Expressway interchange with Lafayette Street.
"More than just an address, Lafayette Street represents a place, a community and a dynamic corridor of social conscience," Toni Prawl wrote for the February 2015 Yesterday and Today.
Before the Civil War, through about 1880, more than 80 percent of the black population in Jefferson City lived near downtown, particularly Hog Alley - today's Commercial Way - between Monroe and Jefferson streets, said local historian and author Gary Kremer.
Second Baptist and Quinn Chapel A.M.E. churches were downtown, and the black school was where the Supreme Court parking lot is today.
Most were employed as domestic servants, so their principle employment was also near downtown, Kremer noted.
However, a small population of blacks had always lived in the area near The Foot, he said.
The earliest black residence, known as the Hagan House at 501 Cherry St., was purchased by Martha King in 1855, according to a report Kremer finished in 1980 and is held by the State Historic Preservation Office.
Lincoln Institute built its first permanent building on its current campus in 1871. Kremer said he suspected that initiated the migration in larger numbers by the black population.
Lincoln became a place of employment, as well, for the black community, Kremer noted.
However, there was also a divide between the well-educated outsiders who taught at the "black Harvard of the Midwest" and the working class, whose ancestors had lived in Mid-Missouri for generations, Kremer said.
By the 1890s, the area under today's Whitton Expressway viaduct at Lafayette Street was growing as a business district, anchored by the moving company of Duke Diggs at 526 Lafayette St.
Another major factor in the growth of this community was likely the opening of Washington School, which replaced the other black school, in 1903 on the hill where Eliff Hall is today on the university campus. That same year, Elm Street Community Christian Church was established at 718 E. Elm St.
Quinn Chapel was relocated from Miller to Lafayette Street in 1955, due to urban renewal downtown.
By the turn of the 20th century, black merchants and services were growing and a residential neighborhood was expanding around it. During segregation, many white-owned businesses and services would not serve blacks and so The Foot grew to serve them.
In Jefferson City, prior to Civil Rights, black people were not allowed in many restaurants across town. They could, however, order from a rear door, Nancy Vessell reported in January 2001.
Also, only 16 seats were available to blacks in the balcony of the downtown movie theater.
Lincoln University offered many cultural and recreational opportunities in the segregated era, including a nine-hole golf course and a bowling alley.
And The Foot was a vibrant community with schools, grocery stores, beauty shops, dry cleaners, taxi cabs and filling stations.
"You really didn't miss anything. You were just kind of in your own little world," Vessell's column quoted Faye Carter.
Urban renewal in the 1960s was thought to "beautify slum areas" but research after the fact revealed a lack of sensitivity by urban planners across the nation not recognizing the significance of multi-generational homes and businesses, Kremer said.
The Campus View Urban Renewal Program of 1962 razed the better part of the vibrant neighborhood. The Jefferson City Housing Authority plan targeted Lafayette Street from East McCarty to East Dunklin streets, as well as blocks of East Miller, Elm, Cherry and Marshall streets.
The 1962 report called The Foot "a slum, blighted, deteriorated and deteriorating an economic and social liability and a menace to the public health, safety and welfare in its present condition and use."
Although often modest buildings, they served as homes and businesses and created a thriving community, he said.
That community "scattered when the homes and businesses were destroyed," Kremer said. "I think it's appropriate and right an effort be made to recall the complexity of that neighborhood."
He said he hoped more than a marker may follow.
"A stranger walking by would have no understanding of the richness of the lives of the people living there prior to the 1960s," he said. "We ought to remember and learn from the past."
The historic Jefferson City Community Center, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the medical offices of Dr. William Ross are essentially the only remnants of that neighborhood's hey-day.
What has been lost was primarily located in the blocks bounded by East Dunklin, Lafayette, East Elm and Marshall streets and included the only black-operated hotel, the Booker T Hotel at 600 Lafayette St. Across from it was The Greasy Spoon.
Turner Gas Station was on the corner of Dunklin and Lafayette streets.
The Green Onion, a black nightclub, was part of the Chitterlin' Circuit, a place where black entertainers visiting the area could come for a meal and a place to stay, reported Natalie Fieleke in February 2006.
Ulysses Tayes opened a barber shop in the neighborhood, where he was also known as an artist and renaissance man.
Other black-owned enterprises included a grocery story, Johnson's Barber Shop, Logan's shoe repair shop, Norman's Laundry, Pat's Shine Parlor, Leona's Cafe, Tops Bar, Acme Cleaners and a cab company.
Other facilities catering to the black population included a pool hall and a community pool.
A residential building called "The Monastery" in the 500 block of Lafayette Street was home to some prominent black professors and intellectuals, such as Lorenzo Green, Cecil Blue and Sterling Brown, and a gathering place for academics in the early 1900s.
The 1946 edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book identified 15 Jefferson City businesses that welcomed black patrons, only two were not located within three blocks of Lafayette Street.
"Fortunately, blacks are no longer prohibited from access to services like they were before the mid-1960s, so the necessity of a community such as The Foot is diminished," the newsletter said. "But, it is important to preserve our past experiences or we are doomed to repeat our errors."
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