Missouri trail leads into a gold mine of black history

Visitors can tour area once known as 'Little Dixie'

By Pamela Selbert | Special to the Tribune

History books may tell us a lot about the past but not necessarily all of it. So says St. Louis storyteller/historian Angela da Silva, whose ancestors were slaves on a central Missouri grain and cattle plantation for several generations. They and many other African-Americans, free or enslaved, helped settle the land and helped shape its history.

In search of this "forgotten Missouri," da Silva, 55, has spent the last decade poring over genealogical records and other historical documents at museums, courthouses and other archives across the state, primarily in the counties along Interstate Highway 70. The highway roughly parallels the Missouri River in an area once known as "Little Dixie" for the large number of slaves who lived there.

Da Silva, head of the Black Tourism Network in St. Louis, has recently developed a "trail" of several dozen sites spanning the state, where visitors can learn more about "what the history books don't tell." February, which is Black History Month, offers an opportunity to consider a trip there deep into African-American history that is relevant far beyond Missouri.

The trail begins in St. Louis, a pivotal point on the Underground Railroad, the network of safe havens that helped slaves escape to freedom. One of the city's newest attractions is the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, named for the free black woman who helped slaves cross the Mississippi into Illinois. She eventually was arrested and charged in court, though her fate is unknown. But at the crossing, dedicated by the National Park Service, visitors learn about Meachum's efforts, and an annual May re-enactment recalls the 1855 morning of her arrest.

Among St. Louis' many other black history sites are the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden; the Old Courthouse, where the celebrated Dred Scott freedom trial took place; the St. Louis Art Museum African Arts Collection; the Black World History Museum; and "Seeking St. Louis" at the Missouri History Museum, an extensive exhibit that explains the important role African-Americans played in the city's history. The History Museum is hosting a George Washington Carver exhibit through March 1 and a "Katherine Dunham, Beyond the Dance" exhibit through Nov. 8.

St. Louis also is home to lesser known but significant sites, such as the hotel where the events in the song "Frankie and Johnny" actually played out and the tree not far from the Mississippi where a hapless slave, escaped from a riverboat, was chained and burned to death in the early 1830s. One observer was abolitionist/newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy, who wrote of the gruesome event in detail. Several years later he was murdered in Alton, Ill., for his anti-slavery stance.

The trail moves west to the Daniel Boone Home and 1,000-acre Boonesfield Village (now a campus of Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo.). Here Boone, who arrived from Kentucky in 1799, helped son Nathan build a fine stone manse, now open for tours, and lived out his final years. A dozen or so historic buildings have been moved here to create the village, where early Missouri history, including slavery on the frontier, is interpreted.

Grady Manus, chief interpreter, explained that when the Boones and other settlers came, they brought with them slaves and free blacks, many of whom were skilled artisans who played an important role in building homes and other structures on the frontier. He added that until recently it was not widely known that the Boones owned slaves or that a slave named Derry was one of Daniel Boone's closest companions. "To omit that from Boone history would be telling less than the truth," Manus said.

Historical re-enactments are held at the village throughout the year, and da Silva, an authority on the Underground Railroad, gives a powerful performance as Lila, a slave woman. (Lila will also appear on Oct. 4, 11 and 18 in three St. Louis parks as yet to be announced.)

Other stops on the trail include Lincoln University in Jefferson City, the only "historically black college started by African-American Civil War veterans," said Lori Simms of the Missouri Division of Tourism. The school, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was begun in 1866 by the enlisted men of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry and their white officers. At the time there was no college for African-Americans in the state. A fine bronze and granite memorial to the soldiers by sculptor Ed Dwight was dedicated at the school in 2007.

The trail continues west through Arrow Rock, a distinctly Southern town frozen in time to Civil War days, when a third of its 1,000 residents were slaves who labored on area hemp plantations. The town shriveled after the railroad bypassed it following the war, and today it counts just 66 residents. Nearby Prairie Park, an elegant plantation home with slave quarters, can be toured. Just to the south is Pleasant Green, which includes a two-story Federal-style plantation home built in 1830, plus slave cabins, all furnished as they might have been in antebellum days.

On to Pennytown, a community founded in 1871 by former slave Joe Penny. It grew to include 200 residents on 65 acres but now consists only of tiny Pennytown Freewill Baptist Church. A handful of former residents maintain the church and hold a homecoming every August. To the west near Lexington, where the Civil War Battle of the Hemp Bales took place in September 1861, the trail passes 1,000-acre Hickland Heathstone, the "only intact slave-breeding plantation in the country that we know of," da Silva said. Adjacent to the fine home, still owned by Hickland descendants, is a five-cell birthing cabin and the overseer's cabin.

Kansas City is on the trail with several black history sites, including the American Jazz Museum, where exhibits tell the stories of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and others; the first-rate Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; and the Arabia Steamboat Museum, a destination unto itself.

The steamboat, loaded with 200 tons of supplies bound for the frontier, sank in the Missouri River near Kansas City in 1856, explained David Hawley, who 20 years ago, helped unearth the boat, which he calls a "19th Century Wal-Mart" for its thousands of artifacts. By then the steamboat wreckage was beneath a cornfield, as the river had long since changed course. Slaves, Hawley said, would have loaded the supplies aboard in St. Louis.

After the Civil War had ended and the 1866 Missouri Constitution mandated "free public schools for Negroes," soldier/educator/civil rights activist James Milton Turner, a former slave, was appointed second assistant state superintendent of schools. His only duty was to establish black schools, among them the log Banneker School, built that year in Parkville just north of Kansas City. The logs were replaced with bricks in 1885, and until 1904, when the school closed, it had held about 70 students in eight grades.

One of the principal supporters of the school was none other than Jesse James, da Silva said. Considering the outlaw's radical Southern sympathies, this may seem surprising, she said. But according to the Missouri Historical Society, Jesse James' mother, Zerelda, had married a Dr. Samuels, the father of two mixed-race children, when her own sons were small, and the children grew up together. One of Jesse James' stepbrothers was headmaster at the Banneker School.

Today, the tiny school at the end of a very steep street, empty for more than a century, is dilapidated and forlorn. But according to a sign, work has begun to turn it into a black interpretive center.

The trail ends at the Jesse James Home in St. Joseph, which was also the end of the line for the notorious outlaw. Under the assumed name Tom Howard, James and his family had moved into the small frame house only a few months before fellow gang member Bob Ford gunned him down April 3, 1882.

James, 34, was standing on a chair to straighten a needlepoint wall hanging when he was shot from behind, said museum director Gary Chilcote. The bullet that killed him left a large hole in the wall (now protected with plastic) near a faded needlepoint, still crooked, embroidered with the words "God Bless Our Home."

The house, moved a few blocks to its current site in 1977, is now part of the Patee House Museum, one of the finest, most extensive museums anywhere. The Patee opened as a luxury hotel with 140 guest rooms in 1858, and today is a National Historical Landmark for its role as headquarters for the Pony Express (1860-61). Over the years the building was a hotel three times and a women's college twice before serving 80 years as a shirt factory that closed in 1957. Six years later it opened as a museum.

Article Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0201-black-historyfeb01,0,5937421.story

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