- [Jim] This 1908 report exposed the conditions in one of St. Louis's poorest and most crowded neighborhoods.

And one historian says author Charlotte Rumbold's innovative use of photos and captions really drove home the message.

- Is this how we want the future of St. Louis to begin, to grow up?

- [Jim] Upskilling and reskilling, the latest workforce development buzzwords.

But there's an organization in St. Louis that's been drawing people to tech education for the last decade.

- Program, obviously, our goal is to get people into a tech career path that they might be interested in.

- [Jim] And an update on the ship known as the USS St. Louis.

We get you up to speed on the problems it had getting up to speed, which almost ended its service.

- So at this point, we think we're pretty safe.

- [Jim] It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we're starting with a story about a little book that was something of a big deal.

It came out in 1908 in St. Louis about St. Louis, and it's still read and studied, but mostly by historians who are interested in the progressive era, the history of social work, women's history because of the author.

But a Washington University historian has taken a new look at this little book and thinks it might also belong now on the history of photography shelf.

The title of the book was "Housing Conditions in St. Louis, Report of the Housing Committee of the Civic League of St.

Louis."

It's less than a hundred pages long.

The author, St. Louis' Charlotte Rumbold, the city's Superintendent of Playgrounds and Recreation.

The study was a deep dive into the conditions that people were living in in the Carr Square neighborhood, at the time one of the city's poorest and most crowded neighborhoods.

The report covers a lot of ground, with text, tables, and charts, and photographs showing dirty, dangerous, and unhealthy housing conditions.

- I thought the report was so fascinating.

The report was sort of the gateway for me to get to know more about her as a person and her work in St. Louis, as well as how influential the report itself ended up being.

- [Jim] Dr. Elizabeth Eikmann's PhD dissertation was on women photographers in St. Louis, and she saw something in this housing report that others might have missed.

- And it wasn't until I started reading more about photography and social scientists work at this time that I began to realize that the work that she actually does with those photographs was really sort of ahead of the curve.

- [Jim] Charlotte Rumbold was not a muck-raking journalist or a rabble rouser, but she was a force to be reckoned with and she got things done.

She'd worked to build playgrounds in crowded neighborhoods and bathhouses where so many people didn't have bathtubs, let alone indoor toilets.

She was a believer that better conditions would make for better citizens and a better city.

The 1908 report describes the overcrowding, the unsafe buildings, trash, unsanitary privies.

Yes, there were two- and even three-story outhouses here.

Rumbold and the Civic League researchers were not the first to take on such issues, not the first to use photographs.

In 1890, Jacob Riis published "How the Other Half Lives," a photographic expose of New York City tenements.

At the same time the Civic League was working on its report, Lewis Hine was documenting child labor in the U.S.

In St. Louis, he took photos of news boys and factory girls.

His captions here pointed out that these boys were all smoking, these shooting craps in the alley.

- And so he used these captions to sort of criticize what he was picturing and get the viewer to really think critically about what they were seeing.

- [Jim] Charlotte Rumbold did not take the housing report photos herself, but Eikmann says her contribution was in how she used them.

Many do simply document the conditions, but some include people, most often children, and the captions don't describe them or their behavior, but instead describe the environment around them.

- So like this particular image, if you were to just look at it quickly, you might miss this group of five children.

They're sort of swallowed up by the huge and dark buildings that surround them and kind of close them in.

And the caption says "Side passageway on North 10th Street, adjoining yard above drains into the passageway," leaving us as the viewer to sort of infer that and think about why are the children in this side passageway on North 10th Street?

Is this how we want the future of St. Louis to begin, to grow up?

- [Jim] The housing study lists the ethnic breakdown of the neighborhood, Jews, Italians, Negroes, Poles, various other nationalities, and a lot of people would've thought they were the problem.

Rumbold wrote that, "It would be a mistake to minimize personal responsibility," but she said, "It seems unlikely that from the ends of the earth 13,000 people of all sorts of heredity and racial and national traditions should gather together in one little section of this city and deliberately choose to be dirty and diseased and lazy and criminal and poor."

- She viewed the sort of failings of the neighborhood as the neighborhood being failed by city government, and took great pains in her report through both the prose and the photography to avoid placing blame on the individuals.

- [Jim] And to drive that point home, she included this photo, which the caption says is "A commendable effort to make a home attractive."

In another part of the report she says, buildings that were unfit for habitation were often on the inside, which she called, "pathetically clean."

Rumbold was a suffragist, a feminist, a social reformer, a modern woman of the 20th century.

In the field of photography, the use of photography, she probably did not think of herself as an innovator.

- Of course, she had full power over what went into that final report.

She was the curator author.

So she decided what photos were going in, how the captions were going to be used to describe those images.

- But she's not the photographer.

- She's not, which is why I think maybe her story has gotten lost.

- [Jim] Or maybe it's because Charlotte Rumbold did so many other things.

After the housing report came out and got attention, she continued to work for the city, following the philosophy that, if we play together, we will work together.

She was the driving force behind the 1914 Pageant and Mask in Forest Park, an all-day extravaganza.

Think of it as a citywide team-building activity.

But shortly thereafter, she left St. Louis.

She wanted a raise, but opponents at City Hall said women were supposed to work cheaper, and they didn't vote.

- To which, of course, she says, "Yes, I'm a woman, I'm proud to be a woman.

It's a great time to be a woman.

St. Louis, you've taught me a lot."

Maybe some hard lessons, some lessons that she didn't really wanna learn.

"You taught me a lot and I'm grateful for it, but equal pay for equal work, I'm outta here."

- [Jim] She did get a pay increase from the city of Cleveland and left St. Louis, but she left it a better place in part for making it clear that this was a city far from picture perfect.

- Access to a strong, skilled workforce is key to attracting new industries to the St. Louis region.

We need to add new jobs and an employable workforce to grow our economy, and fortunately, there are organizations and schools in our region building a strong talent pipeline.

In this next story, we look at a program that is not only re-skilling talent, but also providing opportunity.

- Functions is gonna come next lesson, I'm excited for it, but we'll talk about it a little bit here.

- [Anne-Marie] Visually telling a story about things people do on computers is a challenge, so when I tell you that exciting things are happening in this room and in the lives of the people in it, believe me, it's true.

This is LaunchCode, a nonprofit that offers free tech education and job placement opportunities in an effort to grow and diversify the tech field in St. Louis and reshape the way employers think about hiring.

More on that second part in a minute.

- My background, I have an English major, so I was also not very engaged in the tech space.

Always interested, but never as a career path before going through that program.

- [Anne-Marie] Lexie Baysinger is the Director of Candidate Engagement and Career Readiness at LaunchCode.

She's also a graduate of the program.

- A lot of our opportunities focus predominantly on web development.

And so with that essentially means is helping to create websites, whether that's the part that users see.

So when you and I go to Twitter, being able to interact with just the front end of the website.

Our programs currently focus a little bit more on making sure that when you click that login button, it actually logs you into the website.

- [Anne-Marie] Although the education received at LaunchCode is free and requires no previous coding experience, it is challenging.

Their web development opportunity is an eight-month commitment, two classes a week, with about 15 additional hours of work outside of class.

- The material is challenging.

You're learning how to code and it's a lot of information condensed into a short period of time.

The course, at least the one I'm teaching and the one I was a part of, is an evening course.

So a lot of the students are parents or they have jobs and they have other things in their life going on.

- [Anne-Marie] They also offer a Women+ program.

Meeting only once a week, it's a year-long program created to open doors in tech careers, a predominantly male-dominated industry, to people of marginalized genders.

- Our idea behind that was trying to make sure that we were offering a range of accessible options with our classes.

And so if we think about a lot of the folk that we might be working with in the Women+ program, which encompasses women, non-binary folk, just a full range of people that engage with that class, some of those folks need a little bit extra time in their week, whether that looks like not having to call a babysitter for an additional day of class or just navigating around their work schedules to make sure that that is just, we just need you for like three hours on a Wednesday night to make sure that you can make it to class.

- [Anne-Marie] But if you're thinking of switching careers, it is fair to ask, are tech jobs out there?

While the technology workforce is one of the largest and fastest growing segments of the U.S. labor market, and according to a TechSTL study, the St. Louis area has more than 70,000 open tech jobs, with close to 6,500 regional employers.

And at LaunchCode, partnering with employers is key to adjusting the mindset around hiring.

The people who come into this program and want to have a pathway to career, do they have to have a four-year degree?

- They don't.

So I would say it's actually more typical for the folk that we work with to not have four-year degrees.

I think that that is a pathway that people can still take that will lead them to success, but what's really dope about Launch Code is that it offers people the opportunity to make pathways towards a career in tech without incurring tons of student debt going through a college program.

- [Anne-Marie] I know that that's the mindset of LaunchCode, but is that the mindset of employers?

Because also those HR people have to change what their requirements are.

Is that changing or evolving?

- That's starting to change.

What we are seeing is that more and more companies are becoming willing to look at folk who don't have that really expensive piece of paper that says that, "For four years I studied how to code."

I think a lot of what's exciting right now is that companies are looking at more non-traditional paths similar to LaunchCode and that these are folk who have the dedication and perseverance to go through something that can be very difficult.

- [Anne-Marie] With that competition of workforce, they have to change their mindset.

- [Lexie] Yep, it's really important.

- You may have heard about the new National Geospatial Intelligence Agency campus being built on the city's north side.

The NGA is one of our region's largest employers.

And guess what type of skill they hire?

The kind you get at LaunchCode.

The broader regional geospatial industry supports 27,000 direct and indirect jobs at more than 350 companies and produces a $5 billion economic impact.

And keep in mind, this impact is coming from an industry that barely existed 20 years ago.

To better understand the geospatial industry and its potential for job growth in our region, I had a conversation with Andy Dearing of GeoFutures Initiative.

What is geospatial?

It's very niche.

- It is.

- [Anne-Marie] Tech is huge.

- Yes.

- And this is a big, small part of what tech is.

- It is, it is.

Geospatial, you hear things called geographic information systems, or GIS.

You'll hear all these terms used, and that's kind of the core science behind what we're doing.

But the way it impacts you and me is when you go and you actually order some food on Uber Eats or when you're ordering a vehicle on Uber and wait, you're able to interact with, wait, what are drivers around you or what are restaurants that are around you?

Knowing how to connect those pieces, knowing where you need to go and all those things, they're all using geospatial information.

Or you're going to a destination.

How does it know how long it takes based on traffic and input?

Well, we're all consumers of that data, but we're also producing that information to say, "Oh wait, we slowed down at 6440 at the science center- - So like Waze?

- Yes, exactly.

- That's telling me that there's an accident up here and this is how long it'll be.

- Yes, that's all geospatial technology and things that the underpinning of that.

And so when we think about it, as you look at across industry, any industry sector, whether it be finance, whether it be agriculture, whether it be healthcare or others, they're all using location of information, whether it be location of people, location of things that are out there.

And we can be a leader for that.

There's nobody out there that's, you have Silicon Valley and it's all tech and there's lots of things that are going on, but you can get lost in the shuffle.

For companies and organizations setting up and standing out here in St. Louis, we have the unique sets of skills, we've got all the other ingredients, whether it be venture capital, whether it be access to other industry types, and that's what GeoFutures through Greater St. Louis Inc. is doing, is building that opportunity around that.

- Have I had my head in the sand?

I don't recall hearing anything about geospatial until the whole talk about NGA and announcing that they were gonna stay here and build in North St. Louis.

Did I just miss that or did that really sort of come to surface then?

- No, you probably grew up, your neighbors might have been geospatial professionals at NGA growing up, but they kept it very quiet.

And granted, you'll hear a lot of news of them being the spy agency and those sorts of things.

They've been here in St. Louis since World War II.

They made the aeronautical maps down at the Globe Building, which is kind of near the T-REX facility downtown.

And they've been quietly down by the river.

They have a couple of installations that have been here and they operate in the quiet.

Now they've been very much more open about how to partner and that's why you hear a lot more of it in the news and you hear an update once a week.

- Why, why now?

- It's because of the location of their campus and knowing that, "Wait, we've been in, we're locating in a disinvested area, historically disinvested area."

And the opportunity to actually do it the right way, working with the community, working with GeoFutures to help figure out how do we develop career pathways?

- Do we have the skills, do we have the workforce?

And if we do, do we have the jobs?

Or if we don't, how do we get the jobs here without having the workforce?

I guess what comes first, the workforce or the actual employment, the jobs, the companies?

- The interesting thing is, especially since the pandemic, the need for technical workforce has increased it.

And that is not slowing down by any means.

So we had the demand, it's already there, and we're not dissimilar than any other metro area that's out there on technical workforce.

Where we are positioned is we have multiple partners.

And so what we think about with the GeoFutures roadmap is, and it's a power strip, it's an outlet.

It's got multiple outlets for people to plug into because of the demand and need.

The geospatial industry was this 10 years ago, it was this five years ago, and it's exponentially grown as far as the opportunities, job openings, career paths that are here.

- Because the technology has advanced so much.

- Yes.

- So is there an effort to go into these schools, grab them where they are, starting at the youngest levels and educating them in that STEM area?

- Yes, there's quite a few, and NGA is the catalyst behind this.

But they're not the only partner and they cannot be the only partner for us to be a hub around geospatial.

They've done a great job of saying, "We have a study," and they'll be very honest, "versus our adversaries, the U.S. is falling woefully behind around STEM graduates."

And it's becoming a national security issue of saying if we don't graduate enough STEM graduates out of any of our institutions, we are gonna fall behind our adversaries and they are going to be advanced against us.

What they did here in St. Louis is they said, "How do we start early?"

They have an initiative called K through 16R, which is starting at kindergarten through secondary education, through, "Hey wait, I might be in a different career field, but I want to get in this career field."

How do I, through retirement, how do we upskill and reskill and grow the talent base and setting that up for success here in St. Louis?

And we have the right ingredients.

There are programs now that are set up with St. Louis public schools, with DESE, with others that have said, "Hey, we hear about this geospatial thing, but what are those training and skills that are needed from K through four?

What are they needed five through eight?"

And start working on what STEM skills or what geography or other skills that are might needed to inspire youth to say this is what a career looks like in 10 or 20 years in geospatial and start getting them inspired earlier to where they see themselves either in this field or in some sort of science field beyond that.

- Is this a a four-year degree?

Is this a certificate?

What does this look like if someone wants to go in this field where if they think, "I have to be in school for seven years to figure out all of this stuff," might look a little daunting, but is it?

What do you need to get there?

- All the above.

The great thing about the pathways that are there to get a job in geospatial, you can have a high school certificate.

Gateway Global, for example, they're the only high school accredited geospatial or GeoN certificate that's out there, only one in the nation.

- [Anne-Marie] So what happens when they graduate?

- They can partner up directly with a company called Maxar, which you might have seen Maxar on the news when you're looking at satellite imagery of the Ukraine.

That's coming from them.

- Okay, so a high school graduate with that certificate can be partnered up with Maxar for employment and then continue training and education to expand their career?

- Yes.

We've gotta scale that, because there's over a thousand open jobs in our geospatial industry today here in St. Louis that need to be filled.

- And you're still trying to get more companies to come.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And this industry's moving so fast.

If you look back 20 years ago, there were job descriptions called cartographers, people that made wonderful, pretty maps or intelligent maps.

Now we can do that all on computers.

Well, what are those skills that are needed today versus what were needed 20 years ago, and what are the skills that we need in 10 years, 15 years versus what we have today?

- Right, so you're not even training, trying to get people involved in what's happening now, it's looking forward of where that career is going.

- Absolutely, yes.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - A couple of years ago we did a full documentary about a new Navy ship, the LCS-19, better known as the USS St. Louis.

Well, the program ended with the ship being put into service and we thought, "Well, that's that."

It wasn't.

There were problems with the new LCS ships and the USS St. Louis was actually put on the Navy's list of ships to be taken out of service.

Well, now the ship and its story have been updated.

The commander and some crew members from the USS St. Louis were in town last fall touring the city, including the Soldier's Memorial.

And they weren't here to say goodbye.

No, it looks like the USS St. Louis has managed to survive the threat of being decommissioned.

put out of service, despite being practically brand new.

Is that settled now, can you tell me, regarding the USS St. Louis, is it off that list?

- We are not being decommissioned.

- So at this point we think we're pretty safe.

- [Jim] It's a complicated story involving mechanical problems, defense budgets, and questions about just what kind of Navy the United States needs.

Our interest?

Well, it's the St. Louis.

(champagne bottle shatters) This littoral combat ship, or LCS-19 freedom class, was christened by ship sponsor Barbara Taylor of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car family at a shipyard in Wisconsin in December of 2018.

At the August, 2020 commissioning ceremony, Barbara Taylor was there to officially put the ship into service.

- Commander Hagan, officers and crew of the USS St. Louis, man our ship and bring her to life.

- [Crew] Aye, aye, ma'am!

- [Barbara] Yes!

- [Jim] It was a new generation, state-of-the-art ship designed to be fast, automated, lethal and flexible, but it and other ships like it, had problems.

In simple terms, some of these ships just couldn't get into high gear, and it was an expensive problem, and one of the reasons the Navy decided it might just be cheaper to take some of them out of service, and the USS St. Louis was on the list.

But Congress would have to approve the decommissionings, and this defense budget thing gets very complicated.

The decommissioning did not or has not taken place.

The USS St. Louis underwent some repairs and remains in service.

What's the status now for the USS St. Louis?

How's it doing?

- Our ship is doing really well.

We've had the combining gear fixed.

- [Jim] That's sort of the overdrive here, right?

Kicks you into high speed, right?

- [Eric] Pretty much.

That's all been fixed now.

And so we're looking forward to getting on board and going really fast.

- [Jim] Later that day, ship sponsor Barbara Taylor hosted Commander Turner and three other crew members at lunch, and she was relieved that this would be a continuing relationship between the ship and the city.

- Decommissioning is one of the milestones of the ship, and that's what the sponsor is always there.

And when I accepted this, a ship is usually in service for 30 years.

And so I would joke and say, "Well, I probably won't be around for that."

And then when it came around, I was very upset because I was like, "I've gotten attached to these people."

I love to show them St. Louis.

But I think we're okay, I think we're okay.

- [Jim] The USS St. Louis underwent post-repair sea trials and did fine.

There's a new commander of the LCS-19 and it's heading out for a year-long deployment.

The USS St. Louis is the seventh U.S. Navy ship to carry the city's name.

The first was a sloop-of-war put into service in 1828.

The most famous was the World War II cruiser that escaped the attack on Pearl Harbor and survived so much action during the war it was dubbed the Lucky Lou.

The newest USS St. Louis has survived a very different kind of battle, all focusing on whether it can literally go full speed ahead.

- There's a lot that goes on around "Nine PBS," and you see a lot of what we do when you tune in, but there's a whole army of people behind the scenes making a direct hands-on impact in our community.

And that's where our newest children's series comes from, our community."

My pal Ernmardia Crowder is going to draw you in with the details.

(bright music) - Hey friends, if you're anything like me, you probably grew up reading comic books filled with your favorite superheroes or came home from school tossing your backpack aside and racing to the TV so you can watch them save the day in your favorite cartoons.

Well, is any of this speaking to your inner child like it does me?

You are in luck, because "Nine PBS," along with Lion Forge Animation, is bringing you "Drawn In."

Join four comic book-loving kids as their real world collides with each panel that they read because their comic books actually come to life.

And the catch?

They have to use literacy and problem solving skills to set their world right again.

Closing the literacy gap and celebrating black and brown children in our community is at the heart of the "Drawn In" initiative, which is why some of our amazing staff have been boots on the ground throughout the St. Louis region leading "Drawn In" power hours connecting with kids and their families.

- Which is fun, because it keeps you excited just like some of your kinds of TV.

- Representation matters, my friends.

And you know what they say, if you can see it, you can be it.

And if that's the case, then we've all got a little bit of superhero in us.

Catch episodes and more at Drawnin.org.

- And that's it for "Living St.

Louis."

We want to hear from you.

Connect with us at NinePBS.org/LSL.

I'm Anne-Marie Berger, thanks for joining us, goodnight.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of "Nine PBS."