slavery

The designation from the National Park Service opens up the Quindaro Townsite to new opportunities for federal funding and assistance. The ruins, now deteriorating, were once a haven for Black people escaping slavery and for Free State abolitionists.

The exhibit includes 135 handmade antique dolls — some that were made by enslaved people — and about 60 period photographs showing dolls, children and adults posing for the camera. But not everyone involved in the Kansas City showing is completely comfortable with it.

Just southeast of Kansas City is Lee's Summit, Missouri, founded just a few months after the Civil War ended. Now, the city has a historic downtown shopping district, vibrant local arts scene and plenty of green space to explore.

Abolitionist John Brown wasn't born in Kansas, but made his mark during the Bleeding Kansas era before the Civil War. Today, 165 years after his execution, Brown's violent acts and influence are commemorated across the state of Kansas — including the site of the Pottawatomie massacre.

After 18 months of renovations, the historic Westport home will serve again as a center for stories from the old western frontier. 'We need to tell the story of enslavement and the Native American tribes that were affected by the settlement,' one historian says.

Formed in the 1870s, Nicodemus was settled by formerly enslaved residents fleeing the central bluegrass region of Kentucky. Only a handful of structures survive from the town, which has been designed a National Historic Site.

The Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign of Weston, a small but mighty nonprofit dedicated to documenting the untold stories of Weston's Black forebears, held its first Juneteenth Heritage Jubilee in 2021. Since then, the small river town just north of Kansas City has become a destination for regional Black history.

In the city of Liberty, Missouri — the second town to ever be incorporated west of the Mississippi — you'll find history, hiking, ghost hunting, and a quaint town square with plenty of shopping and dining.

The J. Huston Tavern in Arrow Rock was the first building in Missouri to be set aside for historic preservation with public funding. It was built by enslaved African Americans and served travelers who came through the area.

Artist Kahlil Robert Irving is a Missouri native with two solo exhibitions in museums right now. His exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park grapples with how tools and technology challenge perceptions of what we see and how we understand information.

On Jan. 11, also known as Missouri Emancipation Day, the Missouri History Museum is bringing new attention to an antebellum insurrection plot that was secretly devised by free Black Americans in St. Louis — and how an insubordinate war hero ticked off Lincoln with his antics to free enslaved Missourians during the Civil War.

William Jewell College has commissioned a new choral work, “The Canon for Racial Reconciliation,” which is part of a broader effort at the college to reckon with the institution's racial history. The music melds Orthodox liturgy with gospel sounds, and is co-written by composers Nicholas Reeves and Isaac Cates.