Topeka, Kansas

When a white settler named Claymore Chattilon, alias Clement Shattio, purchased a farm one mile west of what is now Topeka, Kansas, he brought with him the first black settler to that region in Kansas. It is unclear whether or not Ann Davis Shattio was his slave or his wife, but she was the mother of his children. She was born into a family of free blacks in Illinois, but at the age of 10, she was stolen and taken to Missouri and served as a slave to several masters. Whether she regained her freedom in 1849 or 1859 is unclear. The Shattios first appear in Kansas sometime after 1845, first in Uniontown, and then in Topeka.

The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act made settlement across the line that marked the Kansas-Missouri border a much more contentious issue than it had been in the past. That same year, agents of the New England Emigrant Aid Company founded Topeka on December 5. Within a few years, it was clear that the free-state cause urgently needed sympathetic settlers to fight off the already-entrenched proslavery forces in Kansas. Most early settlers (49 percent) were from nearby Missouri, while the number of settlers from New England never numbered more than 6 percent. The total number of blacks in Topeka's Shawnee County in the 1855 territorial census was 48 free and 33 slaves. It is interesting to note that such a small number of African Americans in the region would correlate with such a high-pitched battle between the antislavery and proslavery forces in the territory.

The 1860 census shows a decrease in the number of New Englanders living in Kansas but there was an even sharper drop in the number from Missouri. The largest increase of migrants to Kansas came from the states of the Old Northwest. These same migrants were often sympathetic to the antislavery cause of the Emigrant Aid Company. In addition, the Republican Party promoted the migration of free farmers to the Kansas Territory to form an even stronger challenge to the proslavery forces. The 1857 Dred Scott decision also helped strengthened the cause of the antislavery forces in Kansas at the same time that the migration from the Old Northwest increased.

When residents began composing the Topeka constitution that was a step toward statehood for the Kansas Territory, they limited suffrage and officeholding to white and Indian males but avoided instituting black laws by asserting that they would put those issues before the public at large instead of the constitutional convention—a tactic used by free-state forces through Kansas. So, while the free-state forces pushed for not allowing slavery in Kansas, they could not agree on whether or not free blacks should be allowed to reside in the territory or even execute any of the rights that normally go with citizenship, such as voting and holding public office. In 1861, the state legislature allowed district superintendents of education to establish separate schools for black children. This decision would not be legally overturned until almost a century later in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. The bottom line is that between 1855 and 1859, blacks were not welcome within Topeka's city limits.

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