Despite African Americans’ newfound freedom during the Reconstruction era, securing housing was difficult. A number of black families bought rural plots of land to establish independent townships. Most of these townships were in Missouri’s “Little Dixie” between the Missouri River region and the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, with most of its boundaries concentrated in central Missouri. Its name derives from the fact that prior to the Civil War, most of the area’s economy was made up of slave labor.
More than half of Missouri’s enslaved population lived in “Little Dixie.” The region along the Missouri River provided fertile land that enslavers used to develop southern-style plantations. In fact, the region had been settled by migrants from Southern states like Kentucky and Tennessee who brought their southern culture and lifestyle with them. Confederate support was widespread in the region, and it struggled with the post-war transition because slave labor had made up a large portion of its economy. This struggle created tension between the white and black population, leading some black families to purchase rural land and build separate communities.
Rural areas became sites for black townships because they offered cheap land and ample agricultural work. Formerly enslaved people in “Little Dixie” had experience growing crops and raising animals, making agricultural work a promising avenue to self-sufficiency. Most of these townships were only categorized as hamlets since they were smaller than villages and only consisted of a few houses and plots of land. Although small in size, they offered newly-free African Americans the opportunity to own land, which was difficult in Southern states and Missouri’s bigger cities.
Saline County, Missouri had several black townships emerge during Reconstruction. The largest was Pennytown, a community established in 1871 by Joe Penny, who was formerly enslaved. Penny initially bought eight acres of land to build a homestead for himself. Other formerly enslaved people and their families began to purchase small plots of land surrounding Penny’s. At its peak Pennytown was home to forty families and a thousand residents. Although it was largely autonomous, much of the produce grown in Pennytown was sold in the nearby town of Marshall and some residents sought work from white Marshall families.
Other black townships founded during the Reconstruction era included Three Creeks, a small Boone County settlement of formerly enslaved people where six black families owned farms by 1870 and Namrash, the only black town in Chariton County. These hamlets offered black communities with freedom and safety in the era immediately following the Civil War, a time when many African Americans struggled to integrate into freedom owing to government oppression, white resistance, and economic dependency and debt from slavery.
