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Remembering Steptoe: a Slave Community in Westport

By Sylvia Maria Gross

Kansas City, MO – In order to unravel the mystery of the Steptoe neighborhood in Westport, you'd have to go back about one-hundred-forty years to the times of the Civil War when Missouri's fate as a free versus a slave state hung in the balance.

Joe Louis Mattox, a historian at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, has looked into the neighborhood's history. He sat down with Sylvia Maria Gross to tell us how he first became interested in Steptoe.

 

Sylvia Maria Gross is storytelling editor at KCUR 89.3. Reach her on Twitter @pubradiosly.
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