In the mid-1800s, enslaved people who had escaped from their owners needed a safe way to get to freedom.
Although it was against the law to help them, some people who thought all people should be free came together to help hide and direct them to freedom. And thus the Underground Railroad was born.
“It was imperative that some help was given, and the Underground Railroad was deliberate and organized,†says Jennifer Poindexter, director of the Meet ºüÀêÊÓƵ department of Explore ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
This month, the National Park Service added three area locations to its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. The network includes more than 750 locations with unquestioned ties to the Underground Railroad.
New to the listing are the Tower Grove House at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Archer Alexander’s grave at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Normandy and Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale.
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The Tower Grove House at the Missouri Botanical Garden is included on the list of because four enslaved people escaped from there, with three of them captured the next day.
“That is the reason that Tower Grove House is part of it. It is not because Henry Shaw operated an Underground Railroad house; it is because slaves escaped from that house,†Poindexter says.
Shaw, who owned the house, later gave the land for the Missouri Botanical Garden and Tower Grove Park to the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
“It’s essential to tell the story, right?†Poindexter says.
The enslaved people who escaped were part of the story of another location already on the Network to Freedom list. The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing site on the Mississippi riverfront north of ºüÀêÊÓƵ is where, in 1855, abolitionist Mary Meachum took nine runaway slaves across the river in a skiff to the free state of Illinois.
Among them were an enslaved woman named Esther, her two children and an enslaved man named Jim Kennerly, who had escaped from the Shaw house the day before. Shaw hired bounty hunter Bernard Lynch to track them down.
Police and slave owners met the skiff on the Illinois shore. Meachum was arrested and jailed. Esther was sold to a slaveowner in Mississippi. It is not known what happened to her children. Kennerly escaped capture and a few days later Shaw offered a $300 reward for his return. It is also unknown what happened to him.
“We shouldn’t shy away from telling the story. There are certain things that connect us and help tell our story in ºüÀêÊÓƵ,†Poindexter says.
The burial place of Archer Alexander at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Normandy is in the Network to Freedom program because Alexander found his own way to freedom.
Alexander was a slave who escaped his owners a few miles west of Cottleville in 1863 and made his way 40 treacherous miles to ºüÀêÊÓƵ, where he found safety among soldiers in the Union Army. The U.S. Provost Marshal gave him documents that did not free him but allowed him to find work at the home of William Greenleaf Eliot, one of the founders of Washington University.
Eliot, who would later be the grandfather of poet T.S. Eliot, championed Alexander and wrote a slim book about him, “The Story of Archer Alexander From Slavery to Freedom.â€
According to an essay by University of Pittsburgh professor Kirk Savage, that book contains a brief paragraph stating that Alexander had escaped from his owner because he learned Confederate sympathizers had sabotaged a bridge that Union soldiers were going to use. Alexander told a Union sympathizer about the plot and the bridge was repaired, but Alexander had to escape when his owner discovered what he had done.
That’s the story in Eliot’s book. The story Alexander told the Provost Marshal, which was written down in a legal document, was that he and another Black man told the Home Guard of St. Charles about a small cache of weapons that had been hidden by Rebel soldiers. The guns were found and, after being threatened because of the exposure, Alexander ran away to ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Either way, he was a local hero of the war. Eliot even chose his likeness to represent slavery in general on a statue memorializing emancipation and Abraham Lincoln that stands in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.
Greenwood Cemetery became part of the Network to Freedom program because of at least three people who are buried there.
Most prominent is Harriet Robinson Scott who, along with her husband Dred Scott, filed suits for their freedom because although they had lived free in a free state, Wisconsin, when they came to Missouri Dred Scott was considered a slave once more.
Harriet Scott’s suit was dropped so both sides could concentrate on Dred Scott’s suit. The Supreme Court’s decision that Dred Scott no longer had the right to be free is widely thought to have hastened the Civil War. It is also now universally reviled as one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
Also buried at Greenwood is Lucy Ann Delaney, who was part of another lawsuit for her freedom. Her mother, who had been born a slave, was taken to Illinois when she was a teenager and lived there for several months without her owner registering her as an indentured servant. That fact should have made her free, but she was kidnapped and taken to Missouri, where she was sold once again into slavery.
Delaney’s mother sued for her freedom in 1843, which was granted by the court. Because Lucy Delaney had been born to a woman who was technically free, she too sued for her freedom. In 1844, it was granted to her.
Greenwood Cemetery is also the final resting place of Charlton H. Tandy, who moved to ºüÀêÊÓƵ from Cincinnati as a young man and became an important leader in post-Civil War efforts to secure equal rights for Blacks.
Before he moved, he and his family helped on the Underground Railroad, bringing escaped slaves from Kentucky across the Ohio River to Cincinnati and the free state of Ohio.
These sites join a handful of others in the region that are already in the network, including the Mary Meachum site. The others include parts of the town of Godfrey, especially what is now a Boy Scout camp where there is still physical evidence of escaping slaves and their helpers, and the Old Courthouse in ºüÀêÊÓƵ where the first Dred Scott cases were heard.
The Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Brooklyn is also on the list for oral-tradition stories calling it a station on the Underground Railroad.
More than 50 Black people who carved a place in ºüÀêÊÓƵ history
Ronnie and Ernie Isley
Maya Angelou
Lou Brock
Henry Armstrong
Josephine Baker
Fontella Bass
James "Cool Papa" Bell
Chuck Berry
Grace Bumbry
William L. "Bill" Clay Sr.
Ryan Howard
Miles Davis
Gerald Early
Dick Gregory
Robert Guillaume
Donny Hathaway
Johnnie Johnson
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Bob Gibson
Cedric "The Entertainer" Kyles
Archie Moore
Jo Jo White
Nelly
Ntozake Shange
Clark Terry
Bradley Beal
Akon
Curt Flood
Frankie Muse Freeman
Dred and Harriet Scott
Ozzie Smith
Tina Turner
Elston Howard
Sonny Liston
SZA
Scott Joplin
Jeremy Maclin
John Berry Meachum
Jayson Tatum
Maxine Waters
Lavell Crawford
Katherine Dunham
Redd Foxx
Robert McFerrin Sr.
Willie Mae Ford Smith
Henry Townsend
Albert King
Angela Winbush
Mykelti Williamson
Ella Jenkins
Margaret Bush Wilson
Darius Miles
Reginald and Warrington Hudlin Jr.
Sterling K. Brown
Homer G. Phillips
David Steward
Robbie Montgomery
Donald F. McHenry
Annie Malone
Clyde S. Cahill
Theodore McMillian
Ken Page
And even more ...
Here are other famous African Americans, suggested by readers:
• Steve and Mike Roberts, brothers who served on the Board of Aldermen, founded Channel 46 in 1986 and ran Roberts Wireless along with other business ventures.
• , the first Black licensed CPA in Missouri.
• , first Black person named to the city Board of Police Commissioners; co-founder of Gateway National Bank and former publisher for the American newspaper.
• Ina M. Boon, NAACP leader who was national regional director in the 1960s and helped the integration oft he ºüÀêÊÓƵ Fire Department.
•ÌýClovis A. Bordeaux, who served with the World War II Tuskegee Airmen and worked with Enrico Fermi.Ìý
• Ethel Hedgeman Lyle, founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University in 1908. She was a teacher in Oklahoma, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.Ìý
• Kenneth Brown Billups Sr., choir director for the Legend Singers, ºüÀêÊÓƵ public schools' supervisor of music, president of the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1959.
• Ivory Perry, a civil rights activist who rose to lead activism during the Jefferson Bank protest in 1963. He led the effort to educate people about lead paint and the impacts of lead on children's health.
• Archer Alexander, an escaped enslaved man who became the inspiration for the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.
• , a jazz trumpeter who performed with James Brown, Ray Charles, Pattie LaBelle and many others, and his own David Hines Ensemble.
• Phil Perry, an R&B musician
• , an R&B and gospel singer whose performance on "Showtime at the Apollo" led to fame.
• Football player , a graduate of John Burroughs School.
• , a sports sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley and worked as a consultant to several major league baseball teams, as well as the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors.Ìý
•Ìý, a Webster High School graduate who set the world record for fastest manually timed 100-yard dash in 1974, and still holds that record to this day.Ìý
• Actress Jennifer Lewis, who has appeared in "Black-ish," and the movies "Beaches" and "Sister Act."
•S¾±²õ³Ù±ð°ù Mary Antona Ebo, a nun with the Franciscan Sisters of Mary who was a hospital director, marched in Selma, Ala., and worked on social justice issues into her 90s (including in Ferguson).Ìý
• Larry Hughes, who had a 14-year NBA career and played with the Philadelphia 76ers, Golden State Warriors, Washington Wizards, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, Sacramento Kings, Charlotte Bobcats and Orlando Magic. He went to CBC and ºüÀêÊÓƵ University.
• Eddie Mae Binion, organizer of the South Side Welfare Rights Organization and activist for renters and low-income people. The group Legal Services of Eastern Missouri gives a community service award named after her.
• Gen. Roscoe Robinson Jr. was the first black man to become a four-star general in the Army. After graduating from West Point, he served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He retired in 1985 and died in 1993.
• Norman R. Seay, one of the "ºüÀêÊÓƵ 19" who led the 1963 demonstrations at Jefferson Bank & Trust Co.Ìý
• Isiaah Crawford, president of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.Ìý
• Ernest A. Calloway, who worked with the Teamsters Union in ºüÀêÊÓƵ to try to integrate public schools. He then became president of the local NAACP, and worked in politics to elect black people to local and state offices.Ìý
• Albert Burgess, the first Black attorney in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, who was born in Detroit, moved to ºüÀêÊÓƵ in 1877, and passed the bar. He died in 1932. Information from the Bar Association of Metropolitan ºüÀêÊÓƵ
• Dorothy Freeman, the first Black woman attorney in Missouri and ºüÀêÊÓƵ in 1942.ÌýInformation from the Bar Association of Metropolitan ºüÀêÊÓƵ
• Judge Robin Ransom, the first Black woman on the Missouri Supreme Court.
• Dana Tippen Cutler, the first Black woman elected president of the Missouri Bar.ÌýInformation from the Bar Association of Metropolitan ºüÀêÊÓƵ
The ºüÀêÊÓƵ Walk of Fame honors those who were born, lived or had their success in the area. Here are the people whose names are on the star…