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Community Roots: Selections from the Local Legacies Project
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St. Louis Gateway Classic Logo. Courtesy St. Louis Gateway Classic Sports Foundation

St. Louis Gateway Classic Sports Foundation

In the eight years since its inception in 1994, the St. Louis Gateway Classic Sports Foundation has become a premier sports organization that focuses on events and opportunity for urban youth. The foundation provides the St. Louis community with high quality sporting events where the athletic talent of young people is recognized, celebrated and supported. These events include high school basketball championships; track and field meets; punt, pass and kick competitions; tennis matches; and amateur boxing events. The annual signature event is the Annual Budweiser Gateway Classic football game, featuring teams from historically Black colleges. It has become the largest sporting attraction in the region for local and out-of-state African Americans.

The Gateway Classic wants to send a strong message to youth that someone does care about them, that someone will invest in their skill and provide positive, nurturing alternatives to negative situations. The Foundation has invested more than $1.5 million dollars in the black community and has provided at least 20 full, four-year college scholarships to area high school students each year since 1998. The foundation's outreach has increasingly emphasized the importance of building a better future for youth through programs that target the educational, health, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual development of young people.

Other programs include a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Youth Awareness Day program that recognizes area high school students for essays about Dr. King and the outstanding community services they have performed. The foundation also features a Feed the Hungry Thanksgiving program, a Christmas celebration, a scholarship awards banquet, and the Southwestern Bell Miss Gateway Classic Scholarship Pageant.

Documentation includes text, videotapes, posters, magazines, newspaper articles, a calendar, programs and a press release.

Originally submitted by: William (Bill) Clay, Representative (1st District).



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The Local Legacies project provides a "snapshot" of American Culture as it was expressed in spring of 2000. Consequently, it is not being updated with new or revised information with the exception of "Related Website" links.

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