John Berry Meachum

John Berry Meachum (May 3, 1789 – February 26, 1854) was an American pastor, businessman, educator and founder of the First African Baptist Church in St. Louis, the oldest black church west of the Mississippi River. At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach people of color to read and write, Meachum operated a school in the church's basement. Meachum also circumvented a Missouri state law banning education for black people by creating the Floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.

As a young man, 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 purchase price. The Meachums employed the enslaved people that they purchased and emancipated them when they had saved enough to repay their purchase price. In the meantime, they were also educated and learned skills to be self-sufficient once freed. John and Mary also helped runaway enslaved people across the Mississippi and into Illinois along the Underground Railroad. The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in St. Louis, the 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, Meachum 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 education and self-respect.

Early life John Berry Meachum was born on May 3, 1789, in Goochland County, Virginia. His owner, who Meachum described as a kind man, allowed the young man to be hired out to work at a saltpeter cave. According to Wonning, Paul and Susannah Mitchem were an elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslaved people. Meachum traveled with them. Most of the former slaves settled around the town of Corydon in Harrison County.

When Meachum returned to Kentucky, he learned that his wife's owners had taken her and their children to St. Louis, Missouri. He made a good living in the city as a cooper. By that time, there were 220 congregants, 200 of whom were slaves, who required the permission of their owners to attend church.

In response, Meachum moved his classes to a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, which was subject to federal law This allowed Meachum to resume his educational practices to people of color, free and enslaved, eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws.

Among Meachum's students was James Milton Turner, who was at the school when Meachum was arrested. He was the consul to Liberia under President Ulysses S. Grant. By 1835, Meachum was worth $25,000 . He built a riverboat with a library and operated it as a temperance boat. In 1840, his household consisted of 10 free colored people and six slaves. In 1850, they had eight black people living with them, two of whom were boatsmen. He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory, which was staffed by escaped slaves, Nearly every person that the Meachum's freed paid them back, which provided the money to free others. He punctuated his arguments with Biblical references like Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." The Missouri Republican reported on July 19, 1855, that Mary was tried by a jury and acquitted of at least one charge, and the remaining charges were dropped.

The Colored Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society Mary Meachum was president of the Colored Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society in St. Louis. Because Black people 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 to visit wounded soldiers at the segregated wing of the Hospital at Benton Barracks in St. Louis.

Death John Berry Meachum died in his pulpit on February 26, 1854. (Brenc states that he died on February 19, 1854.) She is memorialized with her husband in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

Legacy

The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, part of the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, was dedicated, Nov 1, 2001, in a special ceremony on the Riverfront Trail. Since then, it has hosted the annual Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Celebration, an event which includes re-enactments of Mary Meachum's river crossing and arrest. The site is located just north of the Merchants Bridge in St. Louis. The John Berry Meachum Scholarship was established at the Saint Louis University to recognize Meachum's work as a minister, founder of the oldest black church in Missouri, educator, and businessman. The scholarship is awarded to medical students at the university. The Meachum School of Haymanot is a theological school named after John Berry and Mary Meachum.