Life in a Slave State

Missouri entered the Union in 1821 as a slave state. Prior to statehood, the laws of the territory considered a slave to be the personal property of his or her master. The state constitution stated that slaves could not be freed without their master’s consent, and that the master must be compensated.

Missouri slaves worked as field hands, maids, nurses, cooks, valets, butlers, handy men and more. During the 1850s, they worked as crews on riverboats on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Not all African-Americans living in Missouri in the early days were slaves. However, free blacks had few rights. In the 1830s, the Missouri General Assembly declared that free blacks living in Missouri had to obtain a license from the court in the county where they lived and post a bond.

By 1847 the Missouri legislature had passed a law specifically prohibiting the education of blacks. In the 1850s, Jefferson City required that all blacks out of their quarters after 9 p.m. carry a pass.

In spite of the hardships, many black Missourians found ways to survive and triumph over the adversity they encountered.

In St. Louis, leftover influences from French colonial times allowed blacks more leeway within the laws that governed them. While life was still hard, a number of free blacks created a community that had opportunities for success. Elsewhere in the state, blacks faced more restrictions but still found ways to rise above their situations

Some black Missourians, like George Washington Carver, became known throughout the world. Others, though not as well known, were no less successful.

Several documented sources on the lives of blacks in Missouri during slave times exist. During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration conducted an oral history survey of former slaves. Transcripts compiled from the narratives of some of those who spent most of their time as slaves in Missouri are contained in the Rawick Papers housed in the Western Historical Manuscripts/University Archives on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis library.

You can learn about life in Missouri prior to the Civil War at the Black World History Museum in St. Louis. One exhibit covers the life of Dred Scott, who sued for his freedom in St. Louis. Other exhibits include the history of slavery and daily life of African-Americans in Missouri from pre-Civil War times through the years that followed.

One of the St. Louisans profiled at the museum is the Rev. John Berry Meachum. Meachum triumphed over the laws prohibiting education of blacks by anchoring a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River. His “Freedom School,” skirted the law by taking place in free territory. Meachum is buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Elizabeth Keckley, who taught at Meachum’s Freedom School, purchased her freedom in 1854. She worked as a seamstress for first lady Mary Todd Lincoln and wrote a book titled, “Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.”

James Milton Turner was born into slavery in St. Louis, but his father purchased the family's freedom in 1843. Turner became a butler and accompanied his boss into the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, he worked to establish schools for freed blacks throughout Missouri. In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Turner Ambassador to Liberia (1871-1878), making Turner the first African-American diplomat to represent the United States in a foreign country. Turner is buried at Father Dickson Cemetery in suburban St. Louis.

Other free blacks acquired wealth and some owned land along Clamorgan Alley, located in what is now Laclede’s Landing entertainment district along the Mississippi riverfront.

Kidnappers carried the infant George Washington Carver and his mother into Arkansas. Their owner, Moses Carver, secured George’s return to the homestead in Diamond, Mo., but never discovered what happened to his mother.

Through years of perseverance, Carver finally attended Ames College in Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1891. Later work at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama would lead to his fame. Carver’s innovations included more resistant strains of cotton, ways to revitalize worn-out soil on farms and hundreds of uses for sweet potatoes and peanuts. The George Washington Carver National Monument and Museum documents this remarkable man’s life.

Born into slavery in Boone County in 1859, Tom Bass made a name for himself as an inventor and horse handler. He invented the "Bass bit," which is used today. In 1897, he appeared in a command performance before Queen Victoria in London. A bust of Bass resides in the Hall of Famous Missourians in the State Capitol.