Local Historian research connects slavery to the MU’s original buildings | Mid-Missouri News [Video]

COLUMBIA – COMO Preservation welcomed researcher and historian Zachary Dowdle as a guest-speaker at the Columbia Public Library on Tuesday, November 19th. 

The organization has been holding monthly guest-speaker events throughout the year to inform the community about the history of Columbia’s architecture. 

COMO Preservation is working to restore architecture in Columbia and they reached out to Dowdle who has done intensive research on slavery and is an expert on MU’s campus buildings. 

Dowdle, dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at William Woods University takes attendees on a journey to explore the connection of slavery to some of the original buildings on the University of Missouri’s campus. 

“I did a deep drive of the college’s historical record of who built the original buildings and the direct evidence that points to some of the ways slavery was worked on at the University,” Dowdle says.

Dowdle previously attended MU …