New Book Examines Slavery in Missouri

Kansas City, MO – The image we have of 19th century slavery often comes from the Deep South, places like Georgia and Mississippi, where rich whites owned huge plantations, kept in business by a large, unpaid labor force of enslaved African Americans. But slavery in Missouri, and some of the other border states, looked very different from that.

UMKC historian Diane Mutti Burke has been researching the small-scale slavery practiced here. She recently published the book, On Slavery's Border, Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households

KCUR's Sylvia Maria Gross asked how she became interested in studying slavery in Missouri.

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