At 7 p.m. on July 25, you’ll have an opportunity to hear about a nearly lost hero of history, Henry Kirklin, an African-American born into slavery.

Billy Polansky of the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture will discuss the Henry Kirklin legacy and how it is being continued. All of CoMo Preservation’s monthly meetings are free and open to the public. The meeting will be in the Friends Room of the Columbia Public Library.

Billy is the executive director of the Center and has been one of the leaders in the effort to recognize Kirklin’s importance in Columbia’s history.

Kirklin was born into slavery in 1858 and freed five years later. He went on to become a successful businessman, farmer, and educator. As a young adult, he worked as a greenhouse supervisor at MU’s horticulture department. A supervisor noticed his talents and asked Kirklin to teach propagation and pruning to the university students — but because of the racial segregation laws at the time, Kirklin was forbidden to enter MU’s buildings, leaving him to teach the students outside. He went on to develop a successful business growing fruit, vegetables and plant starts. Kirklin was known to remark he was “the only negro who ever taught at the University of Missouri,” according to https://buildthistown.org/kirklin. This source notes that the assistant secretary of the Missouri Board of Agriculture in 1913 said Kirklin had been “pretty near a teacher, even if his name was not on the faculty directory.”

Kirklin died in 1938 at age 80, but until 2020 his grave was unmarked.