The steamboat Ben Campbell commonly attributed as John Berry Meachum’s Floating Freedom School. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

At a time when programs supporting the American values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being banned in schools across the nation, it is incumbent on the rest of us to keep alive the history that some are now seeking to suppress. Here is an account of how far we have come while also being a reminder of how far we still have to go — the story of Missouri’s Floating Freedom School.

The Floating Freedom School was an educational facility for free and enslaved African Americans on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. It was established in 1847 by the Baptist minister John Berry Meachum.

Prior to the Civil War, while Missouri – like many states that allowed slavery – outlawed teaching Black individuals to read, abolitionists like John Berry Meachum found ways around the law to educate Black students.

Meachum was born into slavery in 1789 in Virginia and was moved by his owner several times before eventually settling in Kentucky. Having learned carpentry as a trade, Meachum earned enough money to purchase his freedom. He was also able to purchase the freedom of his wife, Mary, who had been moved to St. Louis by her owner.

In 1825, Meachum teamed up with a white Baptist missionary to establish the First African Church of St. Louis – one of the oldest Black churches west of the Mississippi River. Meachum established a school at the church, where he provided classes to free and enslaved Black students.

In 1847, John Berry Meachum was forced to close the school. Earlier that year, the Missouri legislature had passed a law that made it illegal to provide “the instruction of negroes or mulattoes, in reading or writing”. Meachum and one of his teachers were arrested by the sheriff and threatened.

To circumvent the new state law in Missouri, Reverend Meachum bought a steamboat which he anchored in the middle of the Mississippi River, thus placing it under the authority of the federal government. The new floating “Freedom School” was outfitted with desks, chairs, and a library. Students were ferried back and forth between St. Louis and the Freedom School in small skiffs. The school eventually attracted teachers from the East. 

Meachum and his wife, Mary, also helped enslaved people gain their freedom through the Underground Railroad by transporting them across the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois.

Mary Meachum continued to help the enslaved escape after her husband’s death in 1854.  While leading the group across the river on the night of May 21, 1855, Mary Meachum and five of her party were caught and arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The location of their departure from St. Louis is marked by the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Site along St. Louis’ Riverfront Trail. In 2001, the site became the first in Missouri to be added to the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.

Hundreds of black children were educated at the Freedom School in the 1840s and 1850s. Those who could pay were charged one dollar a month. One of the early students was James Milton Turner, who would go on to establish 30 new schools for African Americans in Missouri after the Civil War.