At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach African Americans to read and write,John
operated a school in the church's basement. He also circumvented a Missouri state law
banning education for African American by creating the Floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.
As a young, he guided 75 enslaved people from Kentucky to their freedom in Indiana,
a free state.Once established in Missouri, he and his wife Mary Meachum were conductors on the Underground Railroad.They also purchased enslaved people and took them into their home until they earned enough money to repay their purchases price.The Meachums employed the enslaved people that they purchased and emancipated them when they have saved enough money to repay their purchase price.In the meantime,they were also educated and learned skills to be self-sufficient once freed.John &Mary also helped runaway enslaved people across the Mississippi and into Illinois along the
Underground Railroad.The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in St.Louis, thw first site
in Missouri to be accepted in the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom,was named after Mary.
In 1846,John spoke at the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia and published the
pamphlet An Address to all of the Colored Citizens of the United States,which stressed the importance of educational and self respect.
He was born in Goochland County,Virginia. John was the son of an enslaved Baptist minister named Thomas Granger and an enslaved woman named Patsy.Born into slavery, his slaveholder was Paul Meachum (Mitchem). They moved to North Carolina,and after
nine years,they moved to Hardin County,Kentucky.His owner,who John described as kind
man,allowed the young man to be hired out to work at a saltpeter cave.He also earned
money as carpenter.With his shares of his earnings,John purchased his freedom when he was 21.John then walked 700 miles to Hanover County,Virginia,and purchased his daddy's freedom for 100 Virginia pounds.John was baptized in Virginia in 1811.After they
accumulated more money,the daddy and son walked to Kentucky and freed John's mama
mama and siblings.His family settled in Harrison Indiana.Remaining in Kentucky,John married and enslaved woman named Mary.
According to John,Paul was more than 100 years of age with 75 slaves when he made
John an offer to free his slaves if he would lead them out og Kentucky.He agreed and led the group across the Ohio River to Harrison County Indiana,where his parents had
settled.His parents' neighbors ran the group out of the area and the freed African Americans settled elsewhere.Paul & Susannah Mitchem were and elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslave people.John traveled
with them.Most of the former slaves settled around the town of Corydon in Harrison
County.
When John returned to Kentucky,he learned that his wife's had taken her and their
children to St.Louis Missouri,with only three dollars (equivalent $44 in 2021),he
moved to the river port city to be with her in 1815.He saved his earnings as carpenter,
cabinet,maker,and cooper to purchase the freedom of Mary and their children. He made
a good living in the city as a cooper.
In St.Louis,he met white Baptist missionaries John Mason Peck and James Welch who
established the Sabbath School for negroes in 1817.John began preaching and assisting the missionaries in 1821.After he was ordained by Rev. Peck in 1825,John
constructed a separate building at the same location for the First African Baptist Church and school.Founded in 1827,it was the first African American church west
of the Mississipp.By that time,there were 220 congregants,200 of whom were slaves,
who required the permission of their owners to attend church.The church continued
to grow into the 1840s,when it had 500 parishioners.
A dee-toned missionary spirit,uncommon order and correctness among the slave population,and strict and regular discipline in the church,were among the fruits of
his arduous preserving labor.
Allen's Register,1835.
Beginning in 1822,John taught religious and secular classes for free and enslaved African Americans.It was the first known school for African Americans in Missouri.
called the Candle Tallow School,it charged those who could pay one dollar per student
in tuition.
In 1825,the city had passed and ordinance that banned the education of free African Americans. Those in violation of the law could be whipped with 20 lashes,fined,or
imprisoned.In 1847,the school was closed down by the police,who arrested John
and a white teacher from England.the slave state of Missouri banned all education for
African Americans,one of several restrictions on the lives of both enslaved African Americans and free people of color.It also prohibited them from having independent
African American religious services without a white law enforcement officer present,
or from holding any meetings for education or religion.
John moved his classes in the middle of the Mississippi River,which was subject to federal law and outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.He supplied the riverboat with a library,desks,and chairs, and called it the "Floating Freedom School". This allowed
him to resume his educational practices to African Americans,free snd enslaved,
eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws.
Among John's student was James Milton Turner,who was at the school when John was arrested. He was the consul to Liberia under President Ulysses S.Grant. After the civil
war,he founded the Lincoln Institute,the first school in Missouri for higher education for
African American students.
John worked as a carpenter and cooper.He purchased enslaved, people,who studied
under him and worked for him,and saved their earnings.When the bondsman repaid him,John meachum emanicipated them.By 1835,he was worth $25.00 (eqivalent to $ 656,694 in 2021).
John married Mary,who was born about 1805 in Kentucky.They had two children,John & William.In 1840 his household consisted of 10 free people of color and six slaves.
In 1850,they had eight African Americans living with them,two of whom were boatsmen.
John and Mary helped enslaved people gain their freedom via the Underground Railroad.They transported people by boat to the free state of Illinois.Through profits from his successful businesses,the meachums purchases and freed enslaved people.
He provided on-the-job-training. He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory,which was staffed by escaped slaves,who saved up their earnings, John and Mary purchased the freedom of around 20 slaves between 1826 & 1836. Nearly every
person that the Meachum's freed paid them back, which provided the money to free others.
By 1846,John had purchased the freedom of 22 people and taught them vocational and
life skills to be self-reliant.That year,he spoke at the National Negro Convention in
Philadelphia.He said that black people needed to receive practical,hands-on education
so they would could support themselves after emancipation. He punctuated his arguments with Biblical references like Proverds 22:6: "Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old he will depart from it. He also wrote,
In order that we might do more for our young children, I would recommend manual labor schools to be established in the different states, so as they children could have
free access to them. And i would recommend in these schools pious schools teachers,
either white or colored,who would take all pains with the children to bring them up in
piety, and in industrious habits.We must endeavor to have our children look up little, for they are too many to lie in indleness and dishonor.
John Berry Meachum
After his death,Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad. She and a free
African American man named Isaac traveled by a boat with nine slaves across the
Mississippi River to Illinois, a free state,on May 21, 1855.Once they reached they shore ,
they were arrested and went to jail for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.On May
24,she was charged with slave theft.The charges against Isaac were dropped. The Missouri Republican reported on July 19,1855,that Mary was tried by a jury and acquitted of a at least one charge, and the remaining charges were dropped.
She was president of the ladies aid society in St.Louis. Because African Americans
were not allowed to ride streetcars at that time, the women negotiated with the streetcar company to ride the streetcar one day a week,on Saturdays,to allow the
members of the 'ladies aid society visit wounded soldiers at the segregated wing of the Hospital at Benton Barracks in St.Louis.
John died in his pulpit on February 26.
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