As I write, the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, which is 87 percent white, has a median household income of $203,250. About seven miles away, the zip code around MLK Drive is 94 percent black, and the neighborhood’s median income is about $27,608. “It’s ironic,” Professor Derek Alderman, a geographer who frequently writes about MLK streets, told me, “that we have attached the name of one of the most famous civil rights leaders of our time to the streets that speak to the very need to continue the civil rights movement.”
