Tracing the Footsteps of Courageous Runaway Slaves

  Quindaro, Kansas—a Western Stop on the Underground Railroad

Looking from the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. toward the Missouri River and Missouri. 

The sacred ground of Quindaro speaks to me, still, even a month after I walked the earth where enslaved people fled Missouri, a slave state, to search for freedom in Quindaro, Kansas.

The town started as a small settlement founded in 1856 and located in what was then the Kansas Territory. It was established and built by European Americans, many of whom were abolitionists who came from the East, free African Americans, and Wyandot Indians. Many settled here in the hope of preventing slavery from spreading to the Kansas Territory—to keep it "free-soil" once it gained statehood. Others came seeking big profits from land speculation, hoping to strike it rich. Some came for both reasons.  

For those with the abolitionist mission, their contribution to the birth of Quindaro arose from the energy that comes from desperation. In the mid-1850’s, the tide seemed to be turning—via corruption, voter fraud, and violence—toward allowing slavery in the Kansas Territory. There was a dire need for a port friendly to anti-slavery forces in Kansas and Quindaro provided this.  

The Missouri River running between Eastern Kansas (right) and Western Missouri (left).

Kansas and Missouri share the Missouri River along their northern borders. Along this border back in the 1850’s, a precursor to the Civil War was raging with men and women fighting armed battles over slavery, resulting in the chapter of American history known as “Bleeding Kansas.”  In recent years, the National Parks Service designated the Kansas/Missouri border a National Heritage Area known as the Freedoms Frontier. (http://www.freedomsfrontier.org/Visitors/View-Map/)

Quindaro was a part of this rich and volatile heritage. Although it was not among the most significant stops on the Underground Railroad, it was one of the relatively few western “stations.” By the late 1850’s, Quindaro had become a boom town whose population would eventually reach about 1200. There were many commercial structures with one housing the local newspaper, plus more than 100 private houses, a few churches, a post office, a brewery, two hotels, and even a literary association. The Quindaro Steam Saw Mill Company was the largest saw mill in Kansas.  

When I visited at the site of this once thriving village, these stones (photo below) were be the only visible remains. Quindaro the “boom town” eventually crumbled.

Ruins at the site of the original Quindaro, likely part of a building foundation.

But, it took years and years for the original Quindaro site to wither to this. During the Civil War and in the decades after, it remained a town outside of Kansas City proper but in 1923, it became part of Kansas City, Kansas. Yet, it didn’t feel at all like I was within the boundaries of a city.  It felt, instead, like I imagine it might have felt 152+ years ago when brave, desperate men and women escaped at night in small boats and secret ferry runs across the Missouri River to get to the Kansas side, the freedom side, and then moved with stealth, perhaps up this very hill (photo below), for deliverance from the nightmare that was slavery.  

At Quindaro, looking East toward Missouri.  

Historians say that the runaway slaves often “…hid during the day outside the developed portion of Quindaro, in shallow caves in the wooded bluffs or in the barns of farmers.” Some even gambled by crossing the river in winter when they hoped the ice had frozen enough to be safe. Not everyone made it to the other side.  

Escaping slavery with the hope of freedom.

Escaping slaves called one particular farm “Happy Hollow.” Its owner, Elisha Sortor, was an abolitionist and a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. Once the escapees reached Sortor’s farm they knew they were safe, at least for a while. Sortor and other “conductors” who hid the fugitives eventually helped them move further away from Missouri and the slave catchers, who were all around Quindaro and Kansas, eager to collect the bounty placed on a slave’s head.

Sortor Drive today, named after the Underground Railroad "conductor" Elisha Sortor.

Elisha Sortor's farmhouse where enslaved African Americans were given safe haven during their quest for freedom.

Also facing danger were Sortor and others like him who extended lifelines to the runaways. The "conductors" were violating both the federal Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas Territorial Statutes where the penalty was even harsher than the federal penalty. A conviction in Kansas could result in execution by hanging. Of course, people involved with the Underground Railroad had to keep the strictest silence and when they did speak about assisting the escaping slaves, it had to be in code. 

Eventually, the Civil War came and went and slavery was abolished. Decades afterwards, the original township of Quindaro, located right on the banks of the Missouri River, had vanished but above the original site, beyond the bluffs overlooking it, a primarily African American community settled. Then in the 1980's, plans were announced to develop the original township area into landfill. However, many community members rose up against this prospect and fought a two-decades long battle before triumphantly saving this historic site. Today, there is a commemorative gazebo at the top of the bluffs overlooking the original Quindaro township site and celebrating Quindaro's role in the Underground Railroad. In addition, the National Park Service has designated Quindaro a National Freedom Trail Underground Railroad Network Site.

   

The Commemorative Gazebo sponsored by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. 

Inside the gazebo.

One of the plaques surrounding the site gives a brief history of Quindaro but checking later, I found one line to be quite misleading:  “The town’s incorporation was revoked by the Kansas State legislature in 1862 and the site was never fully revitalized.” 

While the legislature did revoke Quindaro’s incorporation and it never again became the bustling boom town it once was, it did develop into a thriving African American community. There was a hospital as well as schools and churches that were black-operated. Quindaro's jewel in the crown was Freedman’s University, founded in 1865, and the first black university west of the Mississippi River. 

Historian Jeff R. Bremer wrote in a 2003 paper that, "Although the small, free-soil boomtown failed…it laid the foundation for the creation and survival of African American institutions that nourished a marginalized and persecuted minority and helped them prosper during the long, twilight struggle for racial equality." (http://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2003autumn_bremer.pdf)

The college, later renamed Western University, included a music school that was recognized nationally as one of the best. Among its top successes were alumni who worked with Virgil Thomson, Gertrude Stein, and George Gershwin. However, the university closed in 1943 due to financial problems.  

Students rehearsing in the music school at Western University.

                         

Part of the campus of Western University.  

                         

Graduates of Western University

But a few decades before its demise, Western University’s leaders took a bold and courageous step that still resonates deeply with today’s residents of the Quindaro neighborhood, who remain primarily African American. In 1911, it welcomed onto its campus a statue of John Brown, the fiery abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to end slavery. He was executed in 1859 for the raid he led at the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in pursuit of his plan to equip slaves for revolt. Four years earlier, Brown had moved to Kansas to fight the pro-slavery forces there.

John Brown statue at North 27^th Street and Sewell Avenue in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas.

This was the first monument to one of the most divisive men in United States’ history. The inscription is short yet I found it quite moving:  “Erected to the memory of John Brown by a grateful people.” 

Inscription on the John Brown statue in Kansas City, Kansas.

I imagine it must have felt both lonely and emboldening for the African Americans who took the lead in making this John Brown statue a reality. They took this project on when white American society at large was rife with hostility, contempt, violence, and acts of terrorism toward black people. Lynchings were at a peak and the country was under the force of the 1896 United States Supreme Court decision, Plessy vs Ferguson, which upheld the right of states to impose racial segregation in public facilities.  Close to home for the locals, an unswerving segregationist had just been elected mayor of Kansas City, Kansas. 

In other words, the John Brown statue was erected during the very bad old days when African Americans were marginalized and much worse, and society’s “pillars,” all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, often sanctioned this behavior on the part of white Americans. 

Today, if you want to take a look around Quindaro, you’ll find a very affable guide in Luther Smith, director of the Quindaro Underground Railroad Museum. He showed me and my family around both the site of the original Quindaro township and the museum as well.  The museum consists of two rooms in the neighborhood senior center that have very interesting memorabilia about the African American community there over the generations.  

With Luther Smith at the John Brown statue.

                                              

When we were saying our good-byes, Smith thanked us several times for coming and said to be sure to send family and friends there for a visit. He seemed so pleased that this out-of-the-way historic place got our attention.

Quindaro is worth a visit. While you might look at the site of the original township and see only a large, hilly area overgrown with vegetation, I felt I was on hallowed ground where slaves boldly risked everything for freedom, and their allies acted valiantly to assist them. I found myself contemplating and celebrating some of our best values as a nation—equality, freedom, and brotherhood & sisterhood among people from varied backgrounds. 

(You can reach Luther Smith at 913-321-1220 to make an appointment for a guided tour.
There is also a brief audio tour at 913-489-3423, ext. 12#.)  

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