ST. LOUIS — Workers at Boyd's A-1 Auto Repair huddled around a burn barrel during a break from fixing cars that, like the surrounding neighborhood, somehow keep going despite a lifetime of cheap repairs.
A few blocks away, a towering African national flag — its red, black and green horizontal stripes rolling in the cool breeze — marks a new effort to turn one of the roughest parts of north St. Louis around. This time reparations is the central theme.
"We ain't never got our 40 acres and a mule," Fred Parson, seated by the fire, said with a smile. "And I have been here a long time. I am 72 years old."
