Name John Meachum | ||
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Famous missourians john berry meachum
John Berry Meachum (1789-1854) was an American pastor, businessman, educator and founder of the oldest black church in Missouri. Meachum circumvented a Missouri state law banning education for black people by creating the Floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.
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Early life
Meachum was born into slavery in Goochland County, Virginia on May 3, 1789. He was taken to North Carolina and then Kentucky by his owner, where he learned several trades, including carpentry. At 21, he had earned enough money from carpentry to purchase his own freedom and, shortly afterwards, the freedom of his father. His wife Mary Meachum, still enslaved, was taken by her owners to St. Louis in 1815, but Meachum was able to buy her freedom as well and moved to St. Louis to be with her.
Achievements
In St. Louis, Meachum met white Baptist missionary John Mason Peck. With Peck, he started the African Church of St. Louis (later renamed the First Baptist Church of St. Louis), where he taught religious and secular classes to free and enslaved black students. After he was ordained in 1825, Meachum constructed a separate building at the same location for his church and school, which he called "The Candle Tallow School."
The school, which cost a dollar per person for tuition for those who could afford to pay, attracted 300 pupils. Around the same time, St. Louis passed an ordinance banning the education of free blacks, and the school was forced to close down.
In 1847, the state of Missouri banned all education for black people. In response, Meachum moved his classes to a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, which was beyond the reach of Missouri law. He provided the school with a library, desks, and chairs, and called it the “Floating Freedom School”. One of Meachums' students was James Milton Turner, who went on after the Civil War to found the Lincoln Institute, the first school of higher education for black students in Missouri.
Meachum and his wife, Mary, also helped enslaved people gain their freedom through the Underground Railroad and by purchasing their freedom. Meachum’s successful carpentry business enabled him to purchase and free 20 enslaved individuals, whom he trained in carpentry and other trades so that they could earn a living. Nearly every person freed paid Meachum back, so, in turn, he was then able to free others. However, as a slave owner, Meachum himself was sued by some of his slaves for their freedom and for his treatment of them.
In 1846, Meachum published a pamphlet, "An Address to All of the Colored Citizens of the United States," in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In it, he emphasized the importance of collective unity and self-respect, and stated that black people needed to receive practical, hands-on education so they would could support themselves after emancipation.
Death and legacy
Meachum died in his pulpit on February 19, 1854. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
Meachum's wife Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad. She was arrested in 1855 for transporting slaves to freedom in Illinois.
The work of John and Mary Meachum on the Underground Railroad is commemorated every year at the site of Mary's arrest in St. Louis, now renamed the Mary Meachum Crossing.
The First African Baptist Church, now First Baptist Church, moved to fourteenth and Clark streets in 1848, and in 1917 to its present address at Bell Avenue. The church later purchased the adjacent four family flat and converted it into an educational building. The church was burned to the ground in 1940 and was reconstructed on the same site within thirteen months.