Today, the old Quindaro townsite leaves little hint of the once-thriving Missouri River port and hub of Underground Railroad activity. The town sat at the bottom of a steep incline. The path shows what would have been the main street.
After the town was abandoned in the early 1860s, a school for the children of freed slaves was opened. It later became Western University, the first all-Black university west of the Mississippi.
Quindaro and Western University are gone now, but memorials remind us of their importance for slaves seeking freedom and a better life following the Civil War. This statue of John Brown, who was instrumental in leading slaves to freedom in Kansas, stands at the corner of the old Western University site.
