A Lil St. Louis Black History

Jeannette Forchet (1736-1803), a free black woman who was one of the first landowners in St. Louis. She and her first husband received one of the original plots of land in the village of St. Louis; later, she also received several farm lots on the edge of town.

Step inside the house and look for this inventory hanging on the wall.

The inventory, written in French, lists the possessions Forchet and her second husband acquired during their marriage. The inventory was made at the time of Forchet's husband's death in 1790.

Forchet's possessions are quite numerous; a number of items on the list, such as the featherbeds and the armoire, were considered luxury items in the 1700s. It seems that her life was materially successful. Forchet and her children probably supported the family by growing corn on the farm plot and raising livestock.

At the time of Forchet's death in 1803, she was one of the few free black residents in St. Louis. As a woman, under French and Spanish law, she could own property, have a legal marriage and enter into contracts. But, as a person of African descent, Forchet's other rights were restricted; she needed permission to leave town and, if she was a freed slave, a legal infraction could mean her return to slavery.

This is Louisa. An enslaved woman, Louisa was owned by the Hayward family. In the picture, she holds Mr. and Mrs. Hayward's son on her lap.  In 1860, two years after Louisa's picture was taken, St. Louis had a population of 160,773. Out of this number, 3,297 were African Americans; of those, approximately 1,500 were enslaved.

This portrait depicts Dred Scott (1795-1858). Born into slavery in Virginia, Scott traveled with his owner to St. Louis, where slavery was legal.

Scott's ownership changed hands, and he traveled with his new owner into free territories. When Scott returned to St. Louis, he attempted to buy his freedom, but his owner refused. In 1846, Scott petitioned for his freedom at the St. Louis Circuit Court, located in what we now call the Old Courthouse. He argued that because his master had taken him into free territory, he was legally free.

The judge granted Scott his freedom, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the decision. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1857 that African Americans were not citizens and that Scott was still a slave in Missouri, even though he had lived in free territories. One year after the Supreme Court decision, Scott was purchased by St. Louisan Taylor Blow, who granted him his freedom.

Scott was buried in the Wesleyan Cemetery (near Grand Boulevard and Laclede Avenue). The inscription on his headstone read, "In memory of a simple man who wanted to be free."

This painting depicts a slave auction on the steps of the Old Courthouse. Each year on New Year's Day, auctioneers sold probated property - including slaves - on this site.

On January 1, 1861, a crowd gathered, hoping to disrupt the slave sale. Every time the auctioneer asked for a bid, people in the crowd shouted, "Three dollars, three dollars!" Finally, the auctioneer gave up trying to run the sale. Because of the efforts of the people in the crowd, this was the last public slave sale held in St. Louis.

William Wells Brown (1815-1884) and Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818-1907), who both worked as slaves in St. Louis. Before the Civil War, the city's growth and prosperity depended in part on the involuntary labor of enslaved people like Brown and Keckley. Brown escaped from slavery and became a lecturer and author. Keckley, a talented seamstress, purchased freedom for herself and her son. She traveled to Washington, D.C. and became First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker. She wrote of her experiences in her 1868 autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House. One of the dresses she made for Mrs. Lincoln is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.

These objects belonged to Leon Anderson (1904-1998), a center fielder who played for the St. Louis Bees and the St. Louis Sports, segregated semi-professional baseball teams.

During the 1930s and 1940s, thousands of St. Louisans would gather at the ballfield at Grand Avenue and Market Street to watch these African American teams play.

It belonged to jazz innovator Miles Davis (1926-1991). Davis used this trumpet in performance during the last decade of his life, including his famous collaboration with Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival six weeks before his death.

Born in Alton, Illinois and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left this area for New York in 1944. In 1956, he returned to St. Louis to perform at Peacock Alley with the Miles Davis Quintet. You are hearing "All of You," which the group played at Peacock Alley and recorded later that year in New York. You also hear the reminiscences of St. Louis-born poet Quincy Troupe, who heard Davis play at Peacock Alley.

Izetta Reddick (1889-1970), a chiropodist (or foot surgeon) who shared a practice with her husband, T.B. Reddick, during the 1930s and 1940s. Their offices were located in the Jefferson and Chase-Park Plaza Hotels. Although the Reddicks operated their practice out of these hotels, they would not have been allowed to stay as guests; both were reserved for whites only.