The First Morning of their Freedom

10/18/2018 | Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site | Butler, MO

Please join us at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center for a lecture and reception featuring Diane Mutti Burke, professor and chair of the History Department, and the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The lecture, titled "The First Morning of Their Freedom: Black Missourians' Role in Ending Slavery, Ensuring Union Victory and Redefining U.S. Citizenship," will be a prelude to the Battle of Island Mound Commemoration event held on Saturday, Oct. 20 at Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site.

Mutte-Burke's award-winning first book “On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865” (University of Georgia Press, 2010) is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both geography and the small scale of slavery in Missouri. In addition, she co-edited collections of scholarly articles on the Missouri-Kansas Border Wars called “Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border” (University Press of Kansas, 2013) and the history of Kansas City during the 1920s and 30s called “Wide-Open Town: Kansas City during the Pendergast Era” (University Press of Kansas, 2018). She is also working on a new book about refugee populations during the Civil War. Mutti-Burke is dedicated to bringing the Civil War era history of this region to public audiences and is the director of a National Endowment for the Humanities K- 12 teacher workshop on the Missouri/Kansas Border Wars.

Event time: 6:30 p.m. - 8p.m.

Location: Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, 3700 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Kansas City