Milestone reached, legacy remains

Mural honors Collier Brothers Auto Body’s 80 years of Black business history

Collier Brothers Auto Body made it to the milestone its owners hoped to reach.

Five years ago, as the historic Black-owned St. Louis business celebrated its 75th anniversary, co-owner Craig Collier said he hoped to keep the shop going another five years — long enough to reach 80 years.

It did.

Collier Brothers, founded in 1946 and operated by generations of the same family, marked its 80th year before closing its doors June 1.

The family and community celebrated that history Saturday with the Common Ground Community Car Show & Block Party at the shop’s longtime home, 4561 Delmar Blvd. The event included the unveiling of a mural honoring the business.

Brothers Raymond Collier Sr. and Elie “Bud” Collier founded the business in March 1946 after returning from military service. Each contributed $350 in mustering-out pay — money provided to service members leaving the military — to help launch the shop. Raymond had served in the Navy and Elie in the Army.

In segregated St. Louis, the brothers established their business in Mill Creek Valley, the predominantly Black neighborhood that was later demolished as part of the city’s urban renewal program.

Collier Brothers moved five times before settling in 1958 at 4561 Delmar, where it would operate for nearly seven decades.

By the 1970s and ’80s, the shop was thriving.

“I remember my dad coming down here, seeing it really full,” Craig Collier, Elie Collier’s son, told The St. Louis American in 2021. “Back in the ’70s, you know, you couldn’t even walk inside the shop, it was just back-to-back cars.”

Collier had been coming to the shop since he was 3 years old and knew by about age 11 that he liked working with cars.

His cousin Wayne Jackson, Raymond Collier’s grandson, took a different path. Jackson spent 10 years working with computers for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department before joining the family business.

The cousins officially took over the shop in 1996, although the founders remained involved for years afterward.

Raymond Collier continued working well into his 70s before his death in 2014. Elie Collier, who devoted more of his later years to ministry, died in 2015.

As the decades passed, the business changed. Competition increased, and the shop was no longer packed with cars as it had been during its busiest years.

By its 75th anniversary in 2021, Collier and Jackson were considering what would happen when they were ready to step away.

“That’s what we’re kind of in limbo about,” Jackson told The American at the time. “They have a desire, but we haven’t mapped it all out yet. We haven’t decided what we’re doing. We’re trying to work on a succession plan.”

One possibility was Jackson’s daughter, Sydney, who was then finishing college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping her in St. Louis, she was helping answer phones at the shop and had begun thinking seriously about its future.

“It’s always been a family business,” she said in 2021. “We want to uphold that culture and the legacy that was set there by our forefathers.”

She also acknowledged that taking over an auto body shop had not been part of her original plans.

“I am not a business person,” she said. “But I don’t want to let the legacy go down.”

Craig Collier, meanwhile, was thinking about how much longer he could physically continue doing auto body work. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2021 that he hoped the business could make it another five years and reach its 80th anniversary.

Sydney Jackson declined Saturday to discuss the circumstances surrounding the shop’s closure.

The shop’s history received renewed attention through the Missouri History Museum’s “Mill Creek: A Black Metropolis” exhibit, which included Collier Brothers in its examination of the once-thriving Black neighborhood.

Saturday’s celebration included the unveiling of a mural by artist Jen Everett. The mural was commissioned by Delmar Main Street through a public arts initiative funded by a grant from the city of St. Louis Community Development Administration.

The event comes as the Delmar corridor continues recovering from the May 2025 tornado, which caused extensive damage in North St. Louis and other parts of the city.

Sydney Jackson, who hosted Saturday’s event, said she hoped the car show would help bring people together and support efforts to revitalize the corridor.

“There’s community here, there’s love here, there’s entrepreneurship possibilities here,” she said.

Jackson said Delmar continues to represent two different experiences.

“There’s two different experiences going on on the North and the South side of the street at this point in history,” she said. “I think we need to realize that we both have value.”

Jackson said that means making space for both sides and “encouraging those on the North side to remember that they matter too.”

St. Louis American visual journalist Lawrence Bryant contributed to this report.

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