Florissant, Missouri, is an old city with a distinguished history. Like many other places, it is part of slavery's legacy. This book examines slavery in and around Florissant and explores the history of the African American experience in North St. Louis County.

"The African American Experience in Missouri digital collection includes digitized manuscripts by or about African Americans, including personal papers, records of black organizations and churches, collections with significant information on African Americans, civil rights, slavery, and daily life" Includes the Missouri, Clay County, freed Negroes registry, 1836-1856 as well as letters and bills of sales, and some funeral records

The African American presence in St. Louis began in 1763 with the arrival of several free men of color who accompanied Pierre Laclede from New Orleans to set up a fur trading fort on the Mississippi. Within a few decades, the fort had become a prosperous commercial center whose proximity to the western frontier attracted a cosmopolitan community. African Americans in St. Louis--both slave and free--enjoyed greater autonomy and opportunity than those in urban areas of the South and East. Slaves in the city set legal precedent by filing hundreds of freedom suits, often based on the prohibition against slavery set by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. After a century in the region, many blacks enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author studies the history of slaves and free blacks in this city.

Trace the impact of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions as Dred Scott v. Sandford walks you through this iconic court case, whose ruling eventually led to the abolition of slavery.

The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery's expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public at­titudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group's encounters with the law--and placing these suits into conversation with similar en­counters that arose in appellate cases nationwide--Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.

Gender and the Jubilee is a bold reconceptualization of black freedom during the Civil War that uncovers the political and constitutional claims made by African American women. By analyzing the actions of women in the urban environment of St. Louis and the surrounding areas of rural Missouri, Romeo uncovers the confluence of military events, policy changes, and black agency that shaped the gendered paths to freedom and citizenship. During the turbulent years of the Civil War crisis, African American women asserted their vision of freedom through a multitude of strategies. They took concerns ordinarily under the jurisdiction of civil courts, such as assault and child custody, and transformed them into military matters. African American women petitioned military police for ?free papers?; testified against former owners; fled to contraband camps; and ?joined the army? with their male relatives, serving as cooks, laundresses, and nurses. Freedwomen, and even enslaved women, used military courts to lodge complaints against employers and former masters, sought legal recognition of their marriages, and claimed pensions as the widows of war veterans. Through military venues, African American women in a state where the institution of slavery remained unmolested by the Emancipation Proclamation, demonstrated a claim on citizenship rights well before they would be guaranteed through the establishment of the Fourteenth Amendment. The litigating slave women of antebellum St. Louis, and the female activists of the Civil War period, left a rich legal heritage to those who would continue the struggle for civil rights in the postbellum era.

Covering the period from the Louisiana Purchase to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 57 Years is the collective story of the people who worked to legally undue the mandates of the 'slave laws'; through the freedom suits.From Marie Jean Scypion to Dred Scott, more than four hundred battles were fought against the rich, powerful, and entrenched—the Chouteaus, the Menards, the Catholic Church. Anthony Sestric relays the story of lawyers and judges, their clients, and the people who financed the fight to undo slavery and keep Missouri in the Union. 57 Years is the story of heroes and villains, of fighting to make possible the way for the transcontinental railroad. These battles raged from Missouri to Washington, D.C., and were followed by Horace Greely and his New York Times. The cost to some of these heroes was their lives, while others disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Discusses the different ways African American refugees from slavery were treated behind Union Army lines in so-called "contraband camps." In St. Louis, such camps were established at Benton Barracks, Jefferson Barracks, and the Missouri Hotel.

On Slavery's Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding enterprise. Missouri's strategic access to important waterways made it a key site at the periphery of the Atlantic world. By the time of statehood in 1821, people were moving there in large numbers, especially from the upper South, hoping to replicate the slave society they'd left behind. Diane Mutti Burke focuses on the Missouri counties located along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to investigate small-scale slavery at the level of the household and neighborhood. She examines such topics as small slaveholders' child-rearing and fiscal strategies, the economics of slavery, relations between slaves and owners, the challenges faced by slave families, sociability among enslaved and free Missourians within rural neighborhoods, and the disintegration of slavery during the Civil War. Mutti Burke argues that economic and social factors gave Missouri slavery an especially intimate quality. Owners directly oversaw their slaves and lived in close proximity with them, sometimes in the same building. White Missourians believed this made for a milder version of bondage. Some slaves, who expressed fear of being sold further south, seemed to agree. Mutti Burke reveals, however, that while small slaveholding created some advantages for slaves, it also made them more vulnerable to abuse and interference in their personal lives. In a region with easy access to the free states, the perception that slavery was threatened spawned white anxiety, which frequently led to violent reassertions of supremacy.

"'Negroes to hire' tells the intriguing story of life on slaveholding antebellum farms in Missouri. The WPA slave narratives provide compelling first-hand accounts of the day-to-day existence of those held in bondage. Along with insightful commentary by noted historians, authors and educators, this unique documentary sheds new light on a controversial and troubling subject."

From the beginning of French rule of Missouri in 1720 through this state's abolition of slavery in 1865, liberty was always the goal of the vast majority of its enslaved people. The presence in eastern Kansas of a host of abolitionists from New England made slaveholding risky business. Mennonites and Quakers had voiced their detestation of human bondage long before the United States existed. A number of devout persons served time in the Missouri state penitentiary for slave stealing.Based largely on old newspapers, prison records, pardon papers, and other archival materials, this book is an account of the legal and physical obstacles that slaves faced in their quest for freedom and of the consequences suffered by persons who tried to help them. It looks at the widely held belief in slave states that African Americans thoroughly enjoyed being owned and that they only left their owners because they were enticed by abolitionists. It is an overview of attitudes toward slavery in early American abolitionist writings and the institution's protection in both the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. It discusses the experiences of particular individuals such as Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave and seamstress who became Mary Todd Lincoln's best friend after President Lincoln's assassination. It also examines the Underground Railroad on Missouri's borders. Four appendices provide details from two Spanish colonial census reports, a list of abolitionist prison inmates with details about their time served, and the percentages of African Americans still in bondage in 16 jurisdictions from 1820 to 1860.