By Dorris Keeven-Franke
Archer was a hero in his own right, an unknown American hero, whose untold story is difficult to share yet needs to be told. Don’t you think the time is right? For more about Archer visit https://archeralexander.wordpress.com/ online anytime.
A recent entry in the Virginia Humanities’ Website Encyclopedia Virginia shares the story of Archer Alexander. The contributor is Dorris Keeven-Franke who is an award-winning author of books on Missouri history
This is the story of two men named James Alexander, one white, one black. One was the owner of Archer Alexander, one was his son. This son lived and died in St. Charles County.
Missouri was a slave state that the great orator Henry Clay had compromised with over 10,000 enslaved people when it reached statehood.
The Emancipation Monument “Freedom’s Memorial” was paid for entirely by funds from the formerly enslaved. It sits in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. today. It was dedicated by Frederick Douglass on April 14, 1876.
The caravan completed its’ crossing of the state of Indiana. America was on the move.These things are not on the mind of these fifty weary travelers, of which Archer Alexander is a member. In 1876, the Freedom’s Memorial a monument in Washington, D.C. was the vision of thousands of the formerly enslaved people that President Lincoln had helped free. The monument with Archer Alexander (1806-1880) portrays a slave who had worked to free himself, had broken and thrown off his shackles and was rising with the vision of the future on his face. The face of freedom.
Learn the Hidden History of the Emancipation Monument from historians, researchers and authors.
On the road for thirty-seven days, William Campbell’s journal tells us that Archer and the caravan have traveled over five-hundred miles. As these four families, and their enslaved people from Lexington, Virginia move to Saint Charles County in Missouri they would also travel through today’s West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In 1829, roads were… read more
This would have been 23 year-old Archer’s first encounter of a place where blacks enjoyed freedom! Campbell would write: Next day passed through a barren corner of Harrison Co. It is destitute of both wood and water. Poor soil covered with low brush. The roads alternately good and bad.Crossed Blue River at Fredericksburg…