On a bluff above the Missouri River, abolitionists, Wyandot leaders, and freedom seekers built a town that functioned like a doorway: step off the boat on this side, and slave-state Missouri couldn’t claim you. Quindaro was a free-state port, an Underground Railroad lifeline, home to Western University and a 1911 John Brown monument—then the money shifted, the charter was killed, and the place was allowed to sink into brush and rumor.

In this episode, we walk the rise, fall, and resurrection of Quindaro: from its intentional founding as an anti-slavery gateway, to decades of neglect, to the fights over landfills, ruins, funding, and who gets to tell the story now. With receipts from archaeologists, activists, churches, and local reporters, we ask a simple question: What does it mean when a town built as a door is almost erased from the map—and who’s responsible for reopening it?

Content note: mentions of slavery, attempted erasure of historic Black sites.

After Sundown: Monett & Pierce City traces how racial terror in the Ozarks turned into policy-by-practice. We follow the 1894 lynching in Monett and the 1901 mob violence in Pierce City—not just as crimes, but as the start of forced expulsions that erased Black neighbors from maps, deeds, and memory. We say the names—Hughlett Ulysses Hayden; Will Godley; French Godley; Peter Hampton—and track what came next: homes burned, families fleeing, land transferred on the cheap. Then we pull the thread forward to today, where patterns of resegregation echo through schools, zoning, voting, and public life. This episode is receipts-driven, scene-based, and aimed at one question: What did sundown really do to people—and what traces remain?

Sharp End once pulsed along Walnut Street between Fifth and Sixth—a Black business district inside Columbia’s Douglass neighborhood built from dignity, hustle, and genius. Barbers kept the chairs full, cafés like Elite and Vi served meals with respect, Green Tree Tavern booked nights, and McKinney Hall drew legends. Then came two words that always sound like progress until the bulldozers arrive: urban renewal. Condemnations, razing, parking lots. In this episode, we walk the footprint, say the names, and read the receipts—so memory outlives erasure. We also trace today’s efforts to honor the past and support new entrepreneurs on the same ground.
If your family holds photos, menus, letters, or stories from Sharp End, please share them—details in the notes. Follow, rate, and pass this on to someone who needs to hear it. This is That Doesn’t Make Sense: where we mark the places, name the people, and make sure the story doesn’t end where the bulldozers began.