From the beginning of the English colonies in their “New” World, the division between free and unfree labor was clear. The use of indentured servitude, while not a new practice, became a popular source of labor.

The “curse” theory, as it was known, validated the existence of a God-ordained hierarchy between the races – the white man represented the chosen leaders of mankind and the Black represented those cursed and inferior.

As the African slave population increased across the colonies, slave laws adapted to ensure the continuation of the institution.

After 1718, when they established a strong presence in New Orleans, the French began importing African slaves to the Mississippi region in response to increasing needs for labor.

Saint Louis brought together Africans from different parts of Africa as well as from the Americas.

Even as the legal system across the French, Spanish, and British colonies moved to deny Africans their rights, Africans themselves retained a vision of resistance that refused to embrace slavery as a permanent institution.

James Madison noted that slavery fueled conflict between the Northern and Southern delegates during the Constitutional Convention.

In 1790 Congress passed the Naturalization Act, which restricted citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person” who had been in the United States for two years. This effectively denied all enslaved and free Blacks persons the opportunity to become U.S. citizens.

Abolition of slavery challenged the economic model upon which the South derived its wealth and stability, but it also threatened the legal, cultural, and political status quo of the North and South.

The first half of the nineteenth century brought the debate over the legality and morality of the institution of slavery to a dramatic climax.

The history of the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), and enslaved people in St. Louis is significant because the Church established itself in the area using slaves as laborers.

As part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri entered the United States as a slave state, while the state of Maine entered the United States as a free state to maintain the balance of states allowing slavery and those that did not.

As the public debate over free versus slave states continued, an African American slave named Dred Scott pushed the conversation further. He sued for his and his family’s freedom arguing that they had been enslaved in a free state and therefore should be released as free.

The conflict over slavery reached its zenith during a Senate debate on the floor of the Senate in May 1856.

While Missouri entered the United States as a slave state, Missouri entered the Civil War as a border state, with Unionists and Confederates struggling for power.

Over 8,000 Black Missourians fought in the Civil War.

On January 11, 1865, elected delegates to the 1865 State Constitutional Convention in St. Louis passed an ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri. The ordinance passed three weeks before the U.S. Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

Early Reconstruction efforts empowered blacks to own land, build communities, form churches, vote for government officials, and send their children to school.

When the federal government withdrew its support of Reconstruction in 1876, the period of post-civil war growth for Blacks ended. Local and state laws were quickly passed that racially segregated Blacks from much of white life in the South. Known as “Jim Crow,” these laws, regulations, and social requirements relegated Blacks to second-class citizens.