Enslaved people risked everything to escape Missouri for Kansas -- even walking across a frozen river
The banks of the Missouri River have changed since the 1850s and '60s, when slavery in the U.S. was in its final throes — especially in St. Joseph, where a double-decker highway now separates most of the city from the river. Back then, before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channelized the river, the Mighty Mo was wider and shallower.
For enslaved people in this booming part of western Missouri, the muddy river was all that separated them from Kansas, and freedom. Escape attempts happened regularly.
“Usually it was by log rafts, and they would try to go across that way,” said Kami Jones, who leads large group tours at St. Joseph Museums, which include the city’s Black Archives Museum. “But a lot of times, they would wait until it was cold enough that the river was almost frozen, or there was chunks of ice in it, and then cross through the ice.”
Slavery in Missouri is sparsely researched and rarely discussed, and when it is, it’s described as less severe than in the Deep South. But the river, and western Missouri’s location, made it a dangerous place to be in bondage, and one of the first places where American slavery began to crumble.
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/race-identity-faith/2022-02-23/enslaved-people-risked-everything-to-escape-missouri-for-kansas-even-walking-across-a-frozen-riv