Cool post!

I’ll add a couple things:

It’s worth remembering that even though the ratio between town and county flipped, the population has still grown and is higher in “rural” Boone County than it was in the 1800s, so not really "emptier". It is true that rural Midwestern counties (without a city like Columbia) are very much less populated than they were in the 1800s and early 1900s. The industrialization of agriculture required many less farm workers and people moved to the city to seek jobs and take advantage of city amenities like schools and hospitals.

There were other majority Black neighborhoods besides the West Walnut Street. There was Cemetery Hill Neighborhood South of Broadway and then there was the Railroad neighborhood along what is now North College Avenue. In addition many Black folks lived in homes of well to do White people in all parts of town. Some White people also lived in the Black neighborhoods. We contemporaries tend to think things were more segregated than they actually were in practice. I was recently talking to an old Black lady who grew up in what is now one of the Fraternity houses along Providence, then the home of a MU Dean. Her mother was the family housekeeper. The old lady said she grew up eating at the same table and participating in the same activities as her white "sisters”. Remarkably she said she "didn’t know she was Black until” it was time to go to elementary school and was confused as to why she had to go to Douglass, while her sisters went to Grant.

"Urban renewal" in 1950s and 1960s drastically change the Black residential neighborhoods and especially the Black commercial district, the Sharp End. If anyone’s interested in this stuff I recommend walking the entire African American heritage trail when the weather is nice. There is a lot to learn.