You probably know a little bit about Hannibal, Missouri, because of the books written by a guy named Mark Twain, but I bet you don’t know much about the history of African Americans who’ve lived in Hannibal, even though Hannibal has had African American residents from its earliest days. I didn’t until I talked with Faye Dant, founder of a Hannibal museum called Jim’s Journey.

In this episode, Dant fills me in on the history that’s been hard to come by. We talk about her deep family roots in Hannibal and Missouri, and how the lack of recognition for Black history in Hannibal inspired her to create the museum. She describes how she researches the history of the area’s African American communities, and what she learned about the first African Americans in Hannibal. She gives an overview of the city’s Black neighborhoods and how African Americans weren’t allowed to be in many Hannibal neighborhoods after dark.

She describes the limited economic and educational opportunities available to African Americans in town, and her own experience going through the public schools as they integrated. We talk about the foundations of community life, and a couple of people who left an outsized mark on the area’s history: Joe Douglas and George Coleman Poage. We wrap up with a discussion of what she learned about Mark Twain growing up in Hannibal and what she thinks about the way Hannibal presents Mark Twain today.

Show Notes

More about Jim’s Journey

Books we mentioned in this episode

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Transcript

Fri, Jun 27, 2025 8:02PM • 1:08:11

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

African American history, Hannibal, Jim’s Journey, enslavement, community recognition, segregated schools, economic opportunities, George Coleman Poage, Joe Douglas, Mark Twain, Mississippi River, African American neighborhoods, sundown neighborhoods, civil rights movement, museum.

SPEAKERS

Dean Klinkenberg, Faye Dant

Faye Dant 00:00

But it was probably more intentional, in that I was driven. I hope I’m answering this right, but I’m driven to tell this story because I know stakeholders and the community powers weren’t doing it. Weren’t going to do it. As a matter of fact, in the, you know, all visitors bureaus that they all have this history of the community, and there was really no mention of the enslavement. And Hannibal had like, 2000 enslaved people, you know, that they landed here with Moses Bates, the founder.But Hannibal had no real recognition of those people and those contributions.

Dean Klinkenberg 01:10

Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going.

Dean Klinkenberg 01:41

Welcome to Episode 66 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. Well, we’re going to dive into some Hannibal history today, but maybe not quite in the direction you were expecting. We’re going to take a whole episode and we’re going to talk about the history of the African American community in Hannibal.Something that would have been virtually impossible to learn much about until my guest, Faye Dant came along. Faye is the founder and director of Jim’s Journey in Hannibal, and we’ll talk about that during this episode, along with the following topics. We talk about her family history in Hannibal and Missouri. She and her family have been in Missouri for five generations. We talk about the lack of recognition of black history in Hannibal and how that inspired her to take some steps to do something about it, like creating a museum. We talk about what she knows, what she’s been able to learn about the first African Americans in Hannibal. The steps that she’s taken to research black history in the community. We talked some about the African American neighborhoods in town and how even parts of Hannibal had sundown neighborhoods shakes. We talked about what that means, if you’re not familiar with the term. We go over some of the economic opportunities that existed for African Americans historically, the school history, the segregated school history in Hannibal, and how that finally broke down. The foundations of community life for blacks in Hannibal. Her experiences growing up during the period when legal segregation was starting to break down, and we talk about a couple people specifically that left their mark, maybe a little bigger than others, Joe Douglas and George Coleman Poage, and we wrap up by talking a little bit about what she learned about Mark Twain when she was growing up in Hannibal, and her thoughts on how Hannibal presents Mark Twain’s legacy today. A wide ranging discussion, really enjoyed talking with her, so stick around for that.

Dean Klinkenberg 03:44

Thanks to those of you who continue to show me some love through Patreon. Your support makes me smile, and it keeps this podcast going for as little as $1 a month, you can join the Patreon community just a buck a month for that modest amount of money, you get early access to each of these episodes, and you make me smile. So that’s something. Go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg to join that community. If you’re not a Patreon kind of person, you can buy me a coffee. I have a regular caffeine habit, and I appreciate every every little bit that helps me sustain my daily caffeine habit. Go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast and you’ll find instructions there on how you can buy me a coffee. And at that same address, MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast you’ll find a list of all previous episodes of this podcast. You can binge you can select an episode and look at the show notes for that episode. The show notes for this episode will be accessible through that particular address as well. Well, all right, let’s get on with the interview.

Dean Klinkenberg 05:09

Faye Dant is the founder and director of Jim’s Journey, the Huck Finn Freedom Center, a local Black History Museum in Hannibal. And she is also the author of the book, ‘Hannibal’s Invisibles.’ She grew up in Douglasville and Hannibal, one of the oldest African American communities west of the Mississippi River. She’s a fifth generation descendant of enslaved Missourians and civil war veterans. She married another local, Joel Dant, who is a sixth generation Missourian. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Oakland University and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She left Hannibal in 1971 then returned to live there in 2011 after retiring from a career in human resources. As a community historian and the curator of the Jim’s Journey Museum, Faye is compelled to tell the stories of Hannibal’s ordinary and extraordinary black community. They all get a place on the walls of the museum. Welcome to the podcast, Faye.

Faye Dant 06:05

Oh, good. Thank you, Dean. I appreciate the opportunity.

Dean Klinkenberg 06:08

Well, let’s just jump right into this. You in your bio, you mentioned you’re a fifth generation Hannibalian. And how do you pronounce that?

Faye Dant 06:18

Well, I call it a Hannibalian, but it’s actually I am third generation, Hannibalian and five generation here in Missouri. My, my great grandfather was enslaved here, brought from Virginia, and then my, my grandparents actually moved here to Hannibal in 1920. And this is where they had and raised their nine children.

Dean Klinkenberg 06:49

So where did they grow up then? What part of Missouri would they have lived in before they moved to Hannibal?

Faye Dant 06:57

Yes, it was Lincoln County, down near in the country, but down near Eolia, Missouri.

Dean Klinkenberg 07:06

Alright, so how much was your family history sort of passed on to you from older generations, and how much have you had to sort of dig to figure out for yourself?

Faye Dant 07:21

Well, I probably did more digging and exploring, and had to find out for myself. However, as a I should say this, there were lots of family albums, and there were lots of with, you know, with lots of photographs. And my mom was even a scrapbooker, and she carefully cut out and arranged any thing about any black person here in the local area. And she did that for probably 40 years.

Dean Klinkenberg 07:58

Wow. So is that one of the is that partly what inspired you to start Jim’s Journey?

Faye Dant 08:05

Well, probably because it’s probably just a sense of pride in African American, African American contributions, achievements, struggles, hurdles, it probably did motivate me some.

Dean Klinkenberg 08:23

Well, because it sounds like you had a lot of material to sort of get you off to a good start. If she was scrapbooking so much and saving a lot of articles, that must have been a good foundation for you to begin with.

Faye Dant 08:35

Oh, absolutely. It’s been wonderful. You know the person who the black guy, who Tommy Marcellus, who served in two world wars and and, you know, various obituaries that I could go back through, through and see who birthed who, and all that kind of stuff. So, yes, it was it. There was a great source for me.

Dean Klinkenberg 09:00

So tell us, what was your basic idea when you decided you were going to start the Jim’s Journey. What was, what was the core idea that you were working with for that?

Faye Dant 09:14

It was probably more in intentional in that I was driven. I hope I’m answering this right, but I’m driven to tell this story because I know stakeholders and the community powers weren’t doing it. Weren’t going to do it, as a matter of fact, in the, you know, all visitors bureaus that they all have this history of the community, and there was really no mention of the enslavement. And Hannibal had, like, 2000 enslaved people. You know that they landed here with Moses Bates, the founder, but Hannibal had no real recognition of those people and those contributions.

Dean Klinkenberg 10:09

Right, there have been black folks living in Hannibal from the beginning.

Faye Dant 10:14

Oh, absolutely.

Dean Klinkenberg 10:15

And yet, there’s very little that the town museums or historic sites have to say about the experiences of the black folks who’ve lived there.

Faye Dant 10:26

That’s true. And here’s the real truth, I in doing this work, have discovered so much, much, much. I mean, about our businesses, about when and where they were and who had what, and who did what, and and, you know what? I discovered we had a black newspaper here in 1914. It was a weekly, and it was, it was published by one of our ministers, but it was created to do to do what I’m doing, do some uplifting. I mean, you know, we there’s a lot of reporting about the crimes and negative things, but this publisher took it upon himself to take it in another direction.

Dean Klinkenberg 11:15

Wow. 1914 so I can’t, yeah, I have a copy of your book, ‘Hannibal’s Invisibles,’ which I have finished reading, and there’s some really fantastic stories in that. Why don’t we just sort of go through some of the history of the local community, and let’s go back to the very first African Americans who lived in Hannibal. What do you know about who those first black folks were in Hannibal?

Faye Dant 11:41

I came across several formerly enslaved people who participate in the slave narratives that you know, that program, that WPA program created in the 30s to give folks jobs, writers and photographers, those kinds of folks. Well, one of their main charges was to go around the country interviewing formerly enslaved people. And they landed here in Hannibal, and there are at least five people that are on that list who get to tell their stories. And the really funny thing is there, there’s the what they tell and who they talk about in those narratives. From that I can figure out who their descendants are, and I can figure out who the descendants of their owners or the enslavers were. So that that’s a that that’s been a bevy of information. Jacob Lowe, as a matter of fact, one of the, one of the people that land that came with Moses Bates, the so-called founder. He in he was probably an old man, but he got to write his story, and it was published in one of our early, obviously one of our earliest newspapers here. So I get to a sense for for him and and he is what I would describe as one of our pioneers.

Dean Klinkenberg 13:07

So what did you learn about his life? What did he, what did he describe about his experiences during that time?

Faye Dant 13:13

Well, he’s only 14 years old when Bates bought him from a person out of Virginia and he mentions three other people that came with him. He talked about the work they did, clearing the land and building those first log cabins. And you know what, like many, I’ll say it that way, many of those slave narratives and those people that talk, some of them talk about the horrendous and the horrible behavior of the enslavers, but it’s kind of matter of fact, when they, when they share those stories, they don’t, you know, it’s just was life and the way it was, and and that’s what you kind of get from, you know, from from their tellings.

Dean Klinkenberg 14:05

Right. So he was 14, and he came with three other people. Do we know, do you know anything about the other three folks who came with him?

Faye Dant 14:14

Well, not as much. We do know their names, Jemima and Robert, and forgive me, I’m not going to remember the other name, and I swore not to do that, because what I try to do it at the museum is give these folks names, you know, not make them invisible, if you will. But at any rate, we do, we do know those names, and I have those names on full display at the museum, and because there are no last names or anything like that, other than the Jacob Lowe there are no last names. I can’t, I can’t research him or find out anything more.

Dean Klinkenberg 14:52

Right. That’s part of the struggle with documenting, particularly when you get back to the period of enslavement, you know, enslaved people were essentially invisible, or nearly invisible. It’s very, very difficult to learn much about their lives or even their identities from that period of time, as I understand it.

Faye Dant 15:13

Oh yes, my Mom, this, this is so interesting to me. My Mom was born in 1921 she had neighbors who had been enslaved. I mean, obviously they’d been enslaved as children, but that that was their reality, and it that it seems like they took the shame of an they took the institution of enslavement upon themselves as an embarrassment. And we’re kind of, you know, let’s not talk about those days. Let’s not talk about that.

Dean Klinkenberg 15:55

Wow, interesting. So they were embarrassed to have been enslaved.

Faye Dant 16:01

Yes, like it was yes. And in fact, that’s kind of why we moved away from calling them slaves. We call them the enslaved because we, I think the in my reading, it turns out that a slave may suggest that he had some he she was at fault for that somehow.

Dean Klinkenberg 16:24

Wow, the burdens people carry with them, right?

Faye Dant 16:30

Hey, now I also am a firm believer that that evil is in our DNA as well. Yeah, you can’t be an overseer and have 10 children and not have some of that going on in their heads, in their blood, in their DNA.

Dean Klinkenberg 16:47

Right, right. Well, so for Jacob, then, do you know where, who he had descendants that were still in Hannibal after?

Faye Dant 16:58

No, no, I have not been able to find that out? No, I haven’t been able to identify any of those people. I should say it that way. But I do know he stayed and died here in Hannibal. Well, just like Daniel Quarles, the prototype for Jim, he lived the emancipated Daniel Quarles lived and died here in Hannibal.

Dean Klinkenberg 17:18

All right, are there markers for where they’re buried?

Faye Dant 17:23

No, no, I can’t, I can’t find a death certificate or anything about Daniel Quarles, but I will say we have a cemetery here. It’s called ‘Old Baptist’ and since there are other enslaved people, slaves that are buried there. And there are United States Colored Troops buried there. I’m gonna guess that that’s where he was buried. And now this is so funny to me, in that, in that, in that period, the post-emancipation, we had an undertaker. You know, I don’t know how he supposedly got his training or anything like that, but his death certificate identifies him as an undertaker and and the death certificates of some of these people also give him that props for doing that service. So I think that’s very interesting.

Dean Klinkenberg 18:26

Yeah, well, let’s talk a little bit about sort of the neighborhoods then in Hannibal, where post emancipation, where African Americans lived, as I recall from the book, there were three or four different sections of town that were African American neighborhoods.

Faye Dant 18:43

Oh yes, yes, we had, well, you know, I told you, I grew up in Douglasville, and then we had what was called the West Side, and I’m gonna say it this way, that’s where the more prominent Hannibalians lived because it stay. It took a long time to turn that black. There were a lot of white folks that, you know, hung in there, but it was the west side, and it’s where a lot of the our entrepreneurs and ministers and teachers. It’s where a lot of them lived. And then we have The Bottoms, which is similar to Douglasville being the working class. But you know the floods, The Bottoms, by that I mean it was right in the floodplain. So the floods came, they left their homes the water receded, they came back, rebuilt. You know, it’s just that that kind of space that was also an African American neighborhood, and I will say this, it was redlining was a thing here in Hannibal, well, like everywhere. But at any rate, not only was it redlining but there were also sundown neighborhoods here in town. We knew. We were taught where it was safe for a black person to wander into and where it was unsafe. And unsafe meant you obviously there was going to be some name calling, and, you know some bloody noses, and you know all of that, but our parents, you know, and I say that’s more insidious than the signs. Our parents had to teach us where it was safe to go and and you know how to behave.

Dean Klinkenberg 20:35

Right. So you have these black majority or black only neighborhoods in the city, and you have the rest of the city that might have been okay for you to visit during daylight hours, but once the sun started to get that to go down, you had to get out of there and go back to your own neighborhood essentially.

Faye Dant 20:53

Absolutely, yes. I have a friend of mine, a white woman who lives in lived in one of those neighborhoods, and she said her deed actually said that if you have a black person even working for you, be sure they’re gone by sundown.

Dean Klinkenberg 21:09

Wow.

Faye Dant 21:09

So, it was horrible.

Dean Klinkenberg 21:12

Yeah, do you have a copy of those deeds by any chance at the museum? Have you ever had a chance?

Faye Dant 21:17

I do know that owner and I should reach out to that person. I’m going to make a note of that.

Dean Klinkenberg 21:23

That would be a valuable document to have, because I think a lot of people are unaware of just how deep and how institutionalized those practices were.

Dean Klinkenberg 21:35

So well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about daily life than in Hannibal, for if you’re African American, post-emancipation, what were some of the opportunities that were available to you?

Faye Dant 21:51

Well, it was pretty limited. For example, I have a 1927 color directory, and in that directory, it talks about a population of about 20,000 and about 4000 black people. But within that there are 72 cooks and 25 chauffeurs. I mean, you know it so, so we know what, we know what they were doing, what we were doing. So you know that that kind of document actually highlights it for us. Another thing that that that directory had, and some death certificates I’ve come across, we had our own fire department. We had to have our own mailman. We had to have our own policemen. In the earliest days, they were called watchmen. So we were indeed a community within.

Dean Klinkenberg 22:53

So you had to create your own institutions then essentially, too.

Faye Dant 22:56

Absolutely, yeah, grocery stores. Yeah, I read a newspaper article that talked about one of the white grocers here, and it talked about how he gave, how he sold the oldest meat he had to the black people, you know, just, I mean, you know that there’s, it was pretty, pretty powerful discrimination, if you will.

Dean Klinkenberg 23:29

Right. So I get, if you were a young black person who had dreams of, I don’t know that, becoming a scientist, or, you know, doing something ambitious of that kind, probably, you wouldn’t necessarily think about staying in Hannibal, I would guess then.

Faye Dant 23:47

Oh, absolutely you were encouraged to leave. My two things come to mind. My stepfather born, excuse me, my father in law, born in 1909 encouraged all five of his children to leave, because if your day, if you stay here, I’m quoting him now, if you stay here, they’re going to want, want to give you an apron or a broom. And again, that that was just his reality and his you know, the lesson, if you will, that he taught his children. And then now, even today, if you have a kid that you know is is bright and has goals and aspirations, you know you’re going to lose them. They’re not going to they’re not going to stay here, they’re not going to be here. Even though it’s changed some, I mean, there’s one person that worked to the bank, and there’s one person that that we just for an example, we had one black council person here in the ’80s. When she termed out, they skinnied the council down from from 12 down to six, and since then we’ve not had another black council person. The school principals. While there are more schools, elementary, middle school, high school, there has not been a high school principal since 1959 so I mean, the more things change, the more they stay the same. You know that that’s a reality here. So kids with any kind of gumption are going to leave.

Dean Klinkenberg 25:31

What was it at one time, something like 25% of Hannibal’s population was black, and now it’s it’s much smaller portion of the city’s population.

Faye Dant 25:40

Oh yes, it’s more like 5 to 7%. So, you know with that, Dean, it’s amazing that I even am able to do this work, because we don’t have the numbers to to demand it. So it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting thought. I’ll just say it that way.

Dean Klinkenberg 26:07

Well, let’s talk a little bit too about some of back in those post emancipation and those communities. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the cornerstones of the community. Then, what were the places that were kind of the foundations of community life, if you were living one of those in Douglasville or the bottoms or one of the other part black communities in town?

Faye Dant 26:31

Yeah, well, Douglasville, it’s really interesting. It had, not only was it the first black community enslaved, formerly enslaved homeowners, but that’s where our first log cabin school, one, three room, no, one three grades, one room school was built. It’s where our first church was built, in the in the in Hannibal, 1837. Eighth and Center Street Baptist Church. In our oldest city directories, they refer to it as the African Church. And you know some of those other places on that tour that I spoke with you a little earlier about, there is the notion that all of our business were at this in this little section of town called The Wedge. But it turns out that’s not true. We were all over town. We were part of what they now call Hannibal Historic District. In fact, I pointed to a bill. I point to a building on the tour. The address is 318 Main and while there is a sign on the building that talks about the age of the building and the businesses that were there, they make no mention of the fact that a black man owned it, named, he was called Texas Joe, and he had a a cafe and a hotel in that building or on that site. But at any rate, it’s things like that that I get to point out and and folks like that that I get to uplift.

Dean Klinkenberg 28:12

Right. Well, you mentioned the schools too, so tell us a little bit about that school history too. Is that you had, there was segregation in education right up until Brown versus Board of Education, if I remember right.

Faye Dant 28:25

Correct.

Dean Klinkenberg 28:25

So there was, was there, there was a single grade school and a separate high school. And how did that work for black folks?

Faye Dant 28:36

In the early years, there were as many as three little elementary schools. And then they built the high school in like 1880, something like that. And from 1880, I’ll say, for the next five or six years there were those two or three little one room schools, and then those were gradually closed, and we all, and my parents is who I’m talking about, went over down then to our big, huge Douglass School, an eight room brick building that was built around that time. It was, it was beautiful structure, as far as I can remember, I went there through the third grade, and my experience is very different from some of the other people that I I talk with. In my book, I have like, two or three 90 year old women that I interview, and their experience with Douglas is very different from mine, but it was all about not only teaching us reading, writing and arithmetic, but they taught us morals and ethics and how, mainly how to behave, because someday, particularly that. The class, oh, I’ll say, from the 1950s they knew integration was coming, so they spent a lot of time teaching us, or teaching those kids, how to behave when you go over to the white school. And here’s the wonderful thing about those kids that went over that first class, five or six of those kids made the, it was the honor society. That’s what it was called back and I think they still had that, but at any rate, so they had been properly prepared to make that transition and that, you know, I find that that’s just so beautiful to me. And I came across that in once they went over the first few years, they stopped publishing the even the white yearbooks, and I don’t know why, but they had these things called newsletters, and I, let excuse me, newsletters, and I found those. And in those things, it is highlighted who excelled in sports and or academics, and there we are on all those lists.

Dean Klinkenberg 31:10

Wow. So I’m curious now. You about this? What? What were they teaching the black kids about how they were supposed to behave? What were some of the lessons like, what were they trying to get? How were they trying to get kids to behave once they became what schools were integrated?

Faye Dant 31:30

One thing that kind of comes to mind, you could imagine the poverty that that was, that was the reality of those times, particularly for black people, but for everybody, everybody was struggling, is what I contend, you know, small little town with little manufacturing and, you know, few jobs of any substance. At any rate, one woman told me that the main thing this, their teacher harped on was, be sure you take a bath once a week. Be sure your clothes are clean. Be sure you’re you know, remember your manners, yes, ma’am, no, ma’am. So that that’s that, those were the early lessons about behavior.

Dean Klinkenberg 32:12

So the Douglass School, so that that school was for black students from basically kindergarten through high school, is that right?

Faye Dant 32:22

Well, we didn’t have kindergarten back then.

Dean Klinkenberg 32:24

All right.

Faye Dant 32:25

First grade through high school, but we had some feeder communities. That’s what makes it so crazy, from as far as 30 miles, one way, kid, black kids came here to Douglass to go to school. And some of them boarded here with families, and some of them caught rides. And one of the one group from New London, and you know, those that part of the the Marion County, they actually caught a little train, a short line is what it was called to get here to school. And that that’s interesting to me. I wasn’t aware of any of that. I just, I just know we walk, I, as an individual, walked and stood in front of the white school so I could catch a bus to go to the colored school.

Dean Klinkenberg 33:20

Right. I was going to mention that that, I think that was one of the lines I remembered from your from your book, is that the pointing out, part of the absurdity of this whole arrangement is you walked a mile to go to the white school that was the closest school to you, but that was just so you could get on a bus to ride another five miles to get to the Douglass school, right?

Faye Dant 33:40

Yes. oh, that’s crazy, but that was the reality. I may not be, I may be off a little bit with the distances, but it, but I will tell you this, it was in all kinds of weather. We didn’t get snow days back then.

Dean Klinkenberg 33:58

Right. So you were around during that period. You were going to school at the time, the Hannibal schools were integrated?

Faye Dant 34:07

I did. I integrated. I went over to the fourth grade, the only little black girl in my class.

Dean Klinkenberg 34:13

Wow.

Faye Dant 34:14

I feel like I didn’t get called on when I raised my hand, I feel like I didn’t get picked for dodgeball. I feel like you can imagine, Dean you’ve met me. I was a rising star in the black in our little black school, and then I go over here, and I’m almost ignored. So it wasn’t and I think a lot of black kids felt that way. It just, it just wasn’t a great experience. In fact, one of my friends, a classmate of mine, another black girl, went, she went to another school, and we liken ourselves to rape victims. I don’t remember hardly any of the teachers. I don’t remember hardly any. Of the kids, I don’t you know, it’s just all kind of a blank.

Dean Klinkenberg 35:05

Right. And it was like that throughout your educational experience in Hannibal, all the way through high school.

Faye Dant 35:12

It may have gotten better in high school, but not so much better. We were not cheerleaders. We could join the pep squad and anything, anything that was up to the individual, we could we, you know, they had no choice but but to accept our expertise, you know, our contribution to whatever. But if it was kind of a team thing, it you weren’t going to get picked. It was, it was no cheerleaders, no no quarterbacks, definitely. And you know, in sports it was, the rule was three on the road and two at home on the floor at one time.

Dean Klinkenberg 36:09

Explain that. What does that mean exactly?

Faye Dant 36:12

That meant, you know, a basketball team that has five people, right, only three blacks could be on the court at one time. And at home it was only two.

Dean Klinkenberg 36:23

Wow, wow.

Faye Dant 36:27

Oh yeah. Well, we had, there were booster clubs. There were, you know, but that that’s real. In fact, look up that term. It’s, you can Google it. I think that first black basketball coach down in Texas. I think he’s the one that that broke that rule. There was a movie about him. I don’t, I’m not. I’m not very good about remembering movies, but.

Dean Klinkenberg 36:53

Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself. Just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book, ‘The Wild Mississippi’ goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystem supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold.

Dean Klinkenberg 37:32

So what? What was your educational experience like then? Were you just pretty much expected to read the books on your own and get through the material on your own. Like, how much assistance did you get to learn, especially compared with the white students in those classes?

Faye Dant 37:52

I don’t know that it was that blatant, but I did learn on my own. In fact, my Joel, my husband and I, we talk about this a lot. We graduated from that school. We were able to excel in college. I was able to get this, you know, get accepted into the University of Michigan, which is a pretty decent school. And I did well there. I mean, so it must have been, you know, it must have been all right in that respect.

Dean Klinkenberg 38:18

I was gonna say, or you’re just one of those motivated people who was going to succeed, but anyway, you were saying so for if you’re a borderline.

Faye Dant 38:36

If you were borderline or or needed that extra assistance. You didn’t necessarily receive that. And there were a lot of kids that dropped out, and there were a lot of kids that I think it was easier to do it back then, that just opted out of school. They did no high school for them, you know, all that, so. And it may have been for a number of reasons. Some of them had to work, didn’t feel like they had the right clothes, the right you know, whatever. And then some of them, after they got there, learned that they weren’t going to get any kind of support or help. Those were the dropouts as well.

Dean Klinkenberg 39:18

Right. Did the economic opportunities open up any after the schools were integrated?

Faye Dant 39:28

Uh, maybe. But let me say this, on my list of notables, I have people like the first one that got hired Social Security Office. I mean, you know, it was that those, those kind of little baby steps, in 1970 I think, yeah, ’70, I was the first black waitress hired at a white restaurant. We were always in the back, but there. I was front facing, and they didn’t play that. I mean, you know, and so I did get some insults. I mean, you know, it was, yeah, but that, that’s, that’s Hannibal. And I hear, I keep saying, Hannibal, I think it’s every community. I think my story is universal. And I don’t think it has to be rural. I think it’s it urban areas. And, you know.

Dean Klinkenberg 40:25

Right. Yeah, we’re not trying to pick on Hannibal in particular here. These experiences happened in a lot of communities around the country, and not just in the South.

Faye Dant 40:36

Yes.

Dean Klinkenberg 40:38

Well, this, this is the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. I have to ask a little bit about, and I think you have a little bit in the book about this, but can you just talk a little bit about, like, the relationship you’ve been able to ascertain about black folks and the Mississippi River in Hannibal?

Faye Dant 40:58

Well, I think we think of it and we embrace embraced it more for sustenance. I mean, it’s we fished, we there was no boating, there was no skiing, there was, you know, none of that and and very little swimming. As a matter of fact, I can, I can. We get admonished, definitely, don’t go swimming with any white kids. But at any rate, no swimming or anything like that. But, but the the fish fries and, and, you know, all that stuff stands out as I think about the river, and I think about the fact that those fish fries, you know, they went into thing like, things like, oh, scholarship money and and church anniversaries. I mean, that’s what the river meant to us. And we everything that came, I didn’t because I I just didn’t, but most people ate everything that came out of that river. The eels and the bullhead is something, and the crop carp and, you know, all these things that, oh, every everything came out of there was, it was going to get eaten. It was no fish and release.

Dean Klinkenberg 42:19

Right, right. Well, you know, it’s a good way to supplement your diet, right? Because, especially if you’re struggling financially, then you catch some fish, and that’s free food. And I’m sure people came up with their own spins on how to cook and prepare many of those.

Faye Dant 42:38

Yeah, and we were big foragers and big hunters.

Dean Klinkenberg 42:45

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So I think you wrote in the in the book some too. You had a little bit about advocating for change. And I think there was a story about the time that George Wallace, the former Alabama governor and one time presidential candidate, came to Hannibal. Can you tell a little bit about sort of that movement to advocate for broader change in the community, and then a little bit about George Wallace’s appearance in town?

Faye Dant 43:20

You know, I think movement might be an exact might be, might be an exaggeration. He came that with the Klan was definitely a part of our background landscape, if you will. They invited George Wallace here in 1968 when he was running for President. Excuse me, President, and his event was at Central Park. It turns out, however, that while there were plenty white folks, and I don’t know any of them. I I can’t figure that out, but there were about 200 protesters, and I was in, no, I was just out of high school, and I was one of those protesters that was there, me and and all of my cousins and brothers and neighbors. And, you know, we were there protesting, and I’m going to say we were loud enough or demonstrated enough that they were, I don’t know if the word is intimidated, but they did not have a parade they had planned for the next day. So we felt good about that. That made the Associated Press. And so I get to show these pictures to my grandkids of me there in the crowd protesting George Wallace,

Dean Klinkenberg 44:49

Wow.

Faye Dant 44:51

But I don’t call it a movement. We that was the one incident, and I don’t know of any other. I. I don’t mean I don’t know. Well, I was gone, so I can’t testify to that, but I know that since I’ve been back, I have been involved in several protests, one having to do with the climate change, another having to do with George Wallace, and then more recently, having to do with with the current administration. So we are more active now, but there was a whole period in there where we were looking to DC and those other folks to do it for us.

Dean Klinkenberg 45:44

So there wasn’t much going on locally to really push for much change?

Faye Dant 45:48

Not that I recall. We did have an NAACP, and that was, you know, I’m not, I’m not sure how active or they were anything like that.

Dean Klinkenberg 46:02

I imagine a lot of people felt it was probably risky to them to take much of a stand, you know, economically, maybe even to their physical health or the threat of violence, was always there. Were those considerations?

Faye Dant 46:15

Oh, I’m sure they were, yes. But nobody actually spoke about it, not that I can, not that I can recall. And you know what it was probably because we didn’t have the signage. It just probably made it easier not to, not to protest, not to, not to be involved in the Civil Rights Movement in a in a big way.

Dean Klinkenberg 46:51

Right. Well, let’s talk about a couple of the people that you mentioned in the book too, that I want to just give us a sense about who they were and what their lives were like. You mentioned Joe Douglas, who’s the namesake for the neighborhood that you lived in. So tell us a little bit about him.

Faye Dant 47:10

Yes, I know that he died at a 102, here in Hannibal of ptomaine poisoning, ptomaine poisoning, eating pickles, pickled pig’s feet. I know that he lived on Hill Street in Douglasville, and I know that I’ve been able to acquire or been able to create a monument to him over there. So we have that. And I know that he could not have been Injun Joe, like the city still claims, because he didn’t get here until nine years after Twain left, Samuel Clemens at that time, nine years after he left. So that’s the end of that story. But the community, the stakeholders, the folks that run the cave, the folks that run the trolley, they all still refer to him, to him as Injun Joe.

Dean Klinkenberg 48:10

So he was able to acquire some property. Is that right?

Faye Dant 48:16

Yes, yes. Not far, not so far from, from downtown, you know, where most of the settlement went on. So, yeah, but little plots of land over there and that became those, those that space became our, became our homes, and where our schools, first schools and churches were built.

Dean Klinkenberg 48:43

So what kind of background did he have? He had access to a little bit of money, at least, to be able to buy the property. Do you know much about what his work life was like?

Faye Dant 48:54

Oh, I know it. He was, he was called a hostler. That’s what it says on his death certificate. And I’ve been able to decide, well, I’ve decided that that’s like a baggage handler at the river. And you can imagine how much work, how much activity went on there, you know, cargo on and off the boats, and you know, all of that. So he stayed busy enough, and he got paid for his work, as I understand it,

Dean Klinkenberg 49:22

Maybe even had a chance for some tips from a few people if he was…

Faye Dant 49:26

Oh, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 49:27

Yeah, back, that was back at a time when Hannibal still had a busy riverfront.

Faye Dant 49:34

Well, we’re busy now. We we have the cruise ships, and we have a new pavilion there, and, you know, so we’re trying.

Dean Klinkenberg 49:45

Right. All right. So he was able to purchase all those this section of land, and then I guess he started subdividing it and offering lots to people to live on or build their homes on?

Faye Dant 49:59

That’s it. That is the way I understand the story. It’s how I understand the story. And you I mean, you know, we have, we’re very fortunate. We have city directories dating back to 1859 all those are digitized, so you can see where people lived and worked back then and who their neighbors. We’re very fortunate to have that.

Dean Klinkenberg 50:26

Well, let’s go on to one other person you mentioned too, and I recognize his name because I went to college in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and when I was working on the history section about La Crosse for my guidebook, I was I found a book on African American history in La Crosse, and his name was mentioned prominently. So it’s George, I’m gonna say “Page”, is that how you pronounce his last name?

Faye Dant 50:53

No, George Coleman Poage. We have listed him as the first black Olympic medal winner.

Dean Klinkenberg 51:03

So tell us a little bit about him. So he was born in Hannibal?

Faye Dant 51:07

Born in Hannibal, 1804. 1884, I misspoke. His parents were enslaved people here, the Poages was his father, and he belonged to the very prominent family. Family here, they’re the Poages, and they own car dealerships, and, you know, have done well for themselves once they got out of farming. At any rate, him and his mother, she was actually, again, from Ralls County, a little Perry. Perry, Missouri. He had the the father had the wherewithal to leave Hannibal when, when George was only four years old. And so he packed up his wife and George, and I think it was two sisters, and they all moved to La Crosse. He was, Lacrosse is interesting. Well, you’ve read the history. They had a lot of black barbers there, and they seemed to have done okay. He went to an integrated school, and he was one of the first to go to University of Wisconsin. I probably read the same thing that you said, excuse me, that you read that talked about how being only one of 100 blacks was so different. And his you and his and his background is so different from his counterparts, I’ll say it that way, that that we’re still here in Hannibal. You know, he was able to do all those things, but he also didn’t have the support of a strong black community. There were no masons, there was no black school. There was, you know, whatever he did, he just did with his, with his own, from his own wherewithal. And he and his both his sisters, they all graduated from the integrated schools there. And he, once. he graduated from University of Wisconsin, he was recruited to do the Olympics, 1904 in St Louis. You know that Olympics was very, very segregated, and if you read a man name, I don’t know, “Our City is Crying,” I think is the name of the book. Have you read that?

Dean Klinkenberg 53:43

I don’t think so.

Faye Dant 53:45

Well, he talks about the the Olympics, and, you know, they had black people as pygmies and on display. I mean, just all, and it was the the attendance, all that was segregated. We could only one day a week or something. At any rate, he participated in that, and he just stayed there in St Louis and taught at Sumner for a couple years, and then he moved to Minnesota, I think, for a couple years, and ended up in Chicago where he died. I wish I could visit his his home. I have the address where he died, but I have not visited that site. It looks like it’s right there on on the Lakeshore around that area. Worked as a mail sorter at the big post office there in Chicago for a number of years. And he does have descendants that return to La Crosse on occasion, I think they went when they unveiled this huge, 30 foot bronze sculpture to dedicate it to George Poage, and they named a park after him. The interesting thing about the park, and I just learned this from one of my visitors to the museum, is that the park used to be Hood Park, so I don’t know how, oh, how generous they were in doing all that, but at any rate, that’s what I’ve learned, and that’s about what I know about it.

Dean Klinkenberg 55:24

All Right, so what was the sport that he meddled in in the Olympics?

Faye Dant 55:28

The 400.

Dean Klinkenberg 55:32

I probably should do a whole lot.

Faye Dant 55:35

I think they were hurdles. Is it called a hurdle? Have you been to La Crosse to see his monument?

Dean Klinkenberg 55:44

I don’t remember seeing that. So yeah, I think the next time I still get up there once or twice a year, so I will need to find that the next time.

Faye Dant 55:51

Oh, yeah, and the park, whole park.

Dean Klinkenberg 55:57

Yeah, I’m not sure I even knew about that. So yeah, I got to look those up the next time I’m up there.

Faye Dant 56:02

Well, when I was sent doing the research for him, I reached out to their chamber. As a matter of fact, they have t-shirts, George Poage t-shirts.

Dean Klinkenberg 56:13

Wow. And so that that name is still there around Hannibal, those are cousins or relatives or something, the car dealer you mentioned?

Faye Dant 56:23

Oh, those, those are the enslavers. Those are only the white people. There are no black folks around,.

Dean Klinkenberg 56:30

Okay.

Faye Dant 56:31

Oh, no, no, no,

Dean Klinkenberg 56:35

That’s what I was curious about.

Faye Dant 56:37

Yep, yep, that’s who’s that’s who’s left here.

Dean Klinkenberg 56:40

All right. Well, let’s go on to one other topic. And I’m kind of looking at the time and thinking, we’re going to wind down here a little bit, but I’ve got to ask about this. You grew up in Hannibal, at Hannibal schools, into the Hannibal educational system. I’m just sort of curious, what as a kid, like when you were growing up, what do you remember hearing about or learning about with Mark Twain?

Faye Dant 57:06

It wasn’t, it wasn’t a lot I remember reading. It was Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. Well, obviously not remembering, but in the 11th grade, it must have been Huckleberry Finn, because I remember the embarrassment of having to read about about Jim and having to use the N word in the classroom. And again, I feel like like the enslaver in that the shame was on me and not not them for chuckling, or, you know, thinking, thinking it was opportunity to take advantage of some name calling. And I didn’t necessarily. And black people here still don’t necessarily think a lot of Mark Twain. They, you know, I talked to my contemporaries and and they call him just an old white man who was an alcoholic. That’s how they kind of think of him. They don’t, I mean, you know, not the literary giant that some people see. But I will say this, I re, I went away with that thinking, because everything was all about Twain, and I had to kind of unlearn that and come to appreciate him as the first white author to make an enslaved man, a person, a man, and give him children and make him a mentor to that little white boy. And then all of his essays, his essays are way more valuable and tell us way more about Samuel Clemens than any of his children’s books. So at any rate, I’ve come to appreciate him, and that’s kind of what I do in the black community. I uplift him as much as I can,

Dean Klinkenberg 58:56

Right. So it’s interesting, because it kind of sounds like, especially like from that school experience, if you’re you kind of come away with this feeling that he isn’t somebody relevant to your life. He’s just another part of the white institutions that are demeaning your life. But there’s not much of a sense beyond that, maybe for who he was, or his his his status.

Faye Dant 59:29

No, not at all.

Dean Klinkenberg 59:30

Yeah. How do you think Hannibal presents Mark Twain today? I put you on the spot, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.

Faye Dant 59:44

Well, two things I’ll say the former director, who’s since retired, when I approached him about adding Jim’s Journey to their list of options in terms of learning about Twain. He said that our story is all about Tom and Becky. So he rejected me outright. The current director is younger, not quite this scholar about Samuel Clemens, as this other guy considered himself to be. But at any rate, I know that she recently invited a a high dollar consultant in to talk about how they can retain tourism at the level that it was. And I was definitely on that list of people that the consultant wanted to reach out to and wanted to embrace, because I contend it’s a missed opportunity. Jim Journey could bring a whole different group of tourists into Hannibal. They don’t uplift me like that, but they have come to include me more. And you know, I’m talking about Jim’s Journey.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:01:10

Yeah, right, yeah. And my feeling all along has been that there’s sort of almost a Disneyland approach to presenting Mark Twain and his books in Hannibal, and I don’t feel like that’s a very accurate portrayal of who he was or what he even wrote. So I wish that they would, I wish the city would embrace a little more complicated view and a more nuanced view, or complete view, of what Twain was and what he wrote about. I think the Museum does okay. I need to go back there and look again, but I kind of felt like the last time I was there and I went around the whole museum, it seemed like they had a pretty good I thought they went in pretty good depth, but, but yeah, I think there’s plenty of room to do more and get beyond this oversimplified child’s view of Mark Twain.

Faye Dant 1:02:09

And you know, I have, I will say this, though I’ve also admonished them about the images they have of Jim. The first, I guess, artists show Jim in kind of a demeaning way, not, not very flattering at all, kind of like the Aunt Jemimas, right? And when, when folks started changing the appearance of Aunt Jemima, I contend that they should have started changing the images they have of Jim, but they haven’t, and they won’t. So that’s that goes on and on.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:55

Right. Well, so you we do have some control over, like steering people to the right places. So tell us. You know, if you’re a visitor coming to Hannibal and you want to learn more about African American history, what should where should they go?

Faye Dant 1:03:13

Well, they’ve got to come to Jim’s Journey, The Huck Finn Freedom Center, 509 North Third Street. But wait, Dean, I think they’ll also learn here about Clemens, the humanitarian. I have a whole slew of people that I talk about, that I identified with, that identified that he interacted with or he wrote about, and he wrote about many of them in a very flattering way, and he uplifted many of them. You just gotta, you just gotta have a, maybe an open mind when you’re doing that reading. But at any rate, Jim’s Journey is always available. And I do a lot of a lot of private tours, and we do have a website, JimsJourney.org.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:59

Alright, do you do you have any social media profiles that people could check out, Facebook, Instagram, anything like that?

Faye Dant 1:04:08

I have Jim’s Journey Facebook page.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:04:13

So what are, what are your hours? What are the best times to catch Jim’s Journey open?

Faye Dant 1:04:21

Again, I’m open Friday and Saturday, 11 to five, and Sunday, one to five.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:04:27

All right, and you mentioned the website. I will post a link to that in the show notes. Are there any other things that you would recommend people do if they wanted to gain a little more insight into African American life and Hannibal, besides, obviously the mandatory spot, Jim’s Journey?

Faye Dant 1:04:47

I’m not sure that I can say there’s much in Hannibal, you know, tangible. There are no other institutions or anything like that. But I will direct them to to read “James.” I enjoyed that that, the new Pulitzer Prize winning novel about about Jim the the another sequel to Huckleberry Finn. And then I loved “My Jim”, it’s by a woman named Nancy Rawles, and it’s Sadie’s story, and she does a beautiful job in there of telling us, teaching us, sharing with us what life was like for the African American female, the mother, the wife, the woman, and it was somewhat different than it was for for enslaved men. So she she’s going to be highlighting that for me when she comes on June 27 and then on June 28 we’re going to have some readers doing some excerpts from from the book. I have recruited a man and a woman. They’re both storytellers. So I’ve recruited them to do some readings for us, and that should be interesting.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:06:04

Fantastic. I will. I’ll share those on my social media accounts too, so the word gets out about those events, because that’ll those events will take place before this podcast is live. But yeah, those sound fantastic. And if people want a copy of your book, “Hannibal’s Invisibles,” how can they find a copy of your book?

Faye Dant 1:06:27

Well, I encourage you to go to Belt or Arcadia Publishing, but if you want to be lazy, you can do Amazon. It’s they all have copies available for like $25 I think.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:06:45

All right, I will post links to that as well in the show notes. Faye, thank you so much. Thank you so much for talking with me today and sharing your experiences growing up in Hannibal and sharing your stories about black life in Hannibal. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.

Faye Dant 1:07:04

Good Dean. Thank you for thinking of me and being interested in all this.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:07:11

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon, you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that’s set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time.