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Podcast: Queens of the Mines
Episode: Cathay Williams
Description: In 1843, Cathay Williams was born to an enslaved woman and a free black man, ironically in Independence, Missouri. It is hard to know an exact day, because records were not kept for the birth of slaves, and if you were born to an enslaved woman, you were born property. Cathay’s childhood was spent on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri, working for years as a house slave on the plantation of a wealthy planter by the name of Johnson.
Union forces took over Jefferson City in the early stages of the Civil War. Slaves were released and persuaded to se...