Missouri Little Dixie Slave Cabin Project

Contributed by Gary Fuenfhausen-Project Director, Arrow Rock Historian

During six typical changing spring days this April, over one hundred dedicated attendees and followers met with the Slave Cabin Project’s celebrated founder, Mr. Joseph McGill, and members of the newly formed Missouri’s Little Dixie Heritage Foundation (MLDHF), to learn about and honor the often forgotten slave cabin.  The event, Missouri’s Little Dixie Cabin Project, grew out of a desire to create an awareness of these overlooked and often misunderstood architectural testaments of our State’s antebellum African American slave history.

Photo taken by Marshall Miller As a background reference, the “slave cabin,” or slave dwelling, was once a common feature of the rural and urban antebellum landscape in Missouri’s Little Dixie region.  To give you an idea of its presence, in 1860, nearly 52% of Missouri’s slaves were located in the 17 county region of this Southern enclave (out of total 114 counties).  In that same year over half of Missouri’s slave owners were located in Little Dixie on some 11,009 farms, plantations, manufacturing and urban settings.  Little Dixie held the greatest concentration of large slave owners, with 16% of the Little Dixie estates holding 10 or more slaves and 7% owning 15 to 200 slaves.  It is estimated that in 1860, “Little Dixie’s” slave owners, farmers, planters, and urban dwellers, owned some 60,311 slaves living in 13,300 “slave houses.”  Of the total number of “Little Dixie” slave quarters or cabins built by 1860, only about 130 (or 1%) survive. 

 Missouri’s slave culture and history is one of the most under studied and under researched aspects of our State’s past.  Many Southern and state scholars overlook or dismiss our Missouri’s “Peculiar Institution,” regarding it as unimportant when compared with slavery in the Deep South.  It is often forgotten that Missouri’s diverse agricultural system, in particular Little Dixie’s hemp, tobacco, corn, and livestock production, were an essential component of the Southern slave system. 

 This lack of understanding and research of Missouri’s and Little Dixie’s slavery has in many ways lead to an atmosphere of misinterpretation of slavery within our borders.  In particular, with a lack of proper research, information, and funds to document Missouri’s historic slave related sites, museums and preservation organizations can not properly manage slave history and sites.  A few historical organizations have met or excelled in this field, such as the Friends of Arrow Rock in Arrow Rock, Missouri, who over a course of several decades have sponsored several important African American research and archeological investigations in their area. 

 Our project, which was a series of six guest speaker lectures and publicized slave cabin sleepover events, that were free and open to the public, was designed to create an awareness of the importance and contribution of Missouri’s Little Dixie slave environments and slave history.  The educational events, which took place from April 18–23, included four “Slave Cabin Project” sleepovers by Joseph McGill followed by two lectures held at the University of Missouri and the Battle of Lexington State Historic Site.  The lectures featured our guest, Mr. Joseph McGill, who spoke of the importance of slave spaces, as what it was like sleeping in these spaces from an African American’s perspective.  Mr. McGill was followed by a second lecture called “Little Cabins: Slave Dwelling Architecture in Missouri’s Little Dixie,” which focused on the identification of slave buildings.  In this lecture, attendees discovered the urban and rural examples of the four types of slave quarter architecture found in the region.  The project targeted not only the general public, but also educational professionals, African Americans, preservationist, historians, and slave building owners throughout “Little Dixie” and Missouri. http://littledixie.net/

 Despite several days of adverse weather, the events did bring out the public and media from all across the State of Missouri.  Dozens of newspaper articles, television news reports, and other media coverage brought out many supporters, along with an even greater presence on the internet.  State educators and leaders in the historic preservation and history community attended the 6 day event, which generated a great many new friends to save Missouri’s slave cabin architecture and slave history.  The event was so successful, its participants, Joseph McGill and Gary Fuenfhausen, have been asked to present the program in St. Louis this summer.  In addition to the media coverage before and during the Slave Cabin Project, several journalists will be featuring the entire project in their news blogs and a Civil War film scheduled for release next year.  A well-known Missouri magazine based in the Little Dixie Region will also issue a special editorial with a similar sleepover theme, which will focus on Little Dixie’s slave cabins.  In addition to the great coverage received by the project, Joseph McGill, with his nationally based internet followers and media, has also written and blogged about his experiences at the 6 sites in Missouri, while he continues his quest to lecture and sleep in slave cabins throughout the slave states.

 Joe’s blog, http://blog.lowcountryafricana.net/slave-dwelling-project-receives-warm-welcome-in-missouri

Photos taken by Marshall Miller

  Gary Fuenfhausen is an Architectural and Cultural Historian who specializes in Missouri Southern history and architecture. He lives in historic Arrow Rock, Saline County, Missouri, where he and his partner are restoring the historic property “Thompson Villa.” Gary is also concluding his research on the house, which was built in the late 1850s by John C. Thompson. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Missouris-Little-Dixie-Heritage-Foundation/165366320177877?sk=wall

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