Some Washington University students have the opportunity to create history in the classroom this semester.

Students taking history professor Sonia Lee’s course called “Building St. Louis History: The City and Its Renaissance,” will engage in local history by helping a St. Louis family apply for a family-owned building to receive historical preservation status.

The class is based on the story of Lillie Velma Pearson, an African-American woman who owned a grocery store, Tillie’s Food Shop, and two adjacent buildings from 1948 to 1988. When Pearson passed away in 2006, her final wish was that the three buildings, located on the corner of Garrison and Sheridan avenues in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood, remain in the family.

Students in the class are working with Carla Pearson Alexander, Pearson’s granddaughter, to preserve “Tillie’s Corner.” Much of the class will be devoted to conducting research that will become part Alexander’s application to obtain preservation through the National Register of Historic Places.

“One distinct aspect of this class that is different than other classes is that students get a sense of producing knowledge. The fact that they aren’t reading history books, they are making history,” Lee said. “We will have this information that we didn’t have before, and it was made possible by the students.”

Lee said that the class is presenting two key arguments for why the building should be accepted by the National Register: the first is that as a black, female business owner, Pearson was historically significant; the second is that Tillie’s Corner was a site of informal activism.

Lee received a Faculty Innovation Grant from the Gephardt Institute for Public Service to help her pursue the project.

The class is collecting research by seeking out local activists and business owners who worked in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood when the store was in business. The students will conduct interviews, transcribe them and archive the transcripts.

“The woman who owned the store—I definitely think is significant,” sophomore Elizabeth Crowell, a student in Dr. Lee’s Class, said. “She owned it all by herself—she didn’t have a husband at that point and then she even raised children. She also was working in an area where there weren’t that many businesses. A lot of people were leaving the town because the area was getting worse.”

Pearson was an entrepreneur with a thriving business at a time when it was difficult for both black individuals and women to achieve success, Lee said.

She kept her shop open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., let people waiting on paychecks make purchases on credit and offered delivery services for the elderly.

“We are writing about the history of people that are not explicitly parts of the civil rights movement,” Lee said. “Ordinary citizens whose names will not appear in the Post-Dispatch were still really foundational leaders of communities.”

Alexander plans to renovate the buildings, and is considering turning the corner into either a tutoring center for children or a multi-service center for elderly people.

If the application for the National Register of Historic Places is accepted, up to 45 percent of the renovation costs would be covered.