John Berry Meachum

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John Berry Meachum

John Berry Meachum (1789-1854) was an African-American businessman, educator and founder of the oldest black church in Missouri.

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 years old, 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.[1]

Achievements

In St. Louis, Meachum met white Baptist missionary John Mason Peck. With Peck, he started the First African Baptist Church, 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." [2]

The school, which cost a dollar per person for those who could afford to pay, attracted up to 300 pupils. Around the same time, St. Louis passed an ordinance banning the education of free blacks, and the school was closed down. In 1847, the state of Missouri banned all education for black people. In response, Meachum moved his classes to a Steamboat on 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”.[3][4] 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.

John and Mary Meachum also helped enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad and by purchasing their freedom. Meachum’s successful carpentry business enabled him to purchase and free twenty enslaved individuals, who he trained in carpentry and other trades so that they could earn a living. Nearly every person freed paid Meachum back, so he was then able to free others. However, as a slave owner, Meachum was sued by some of his slaves for their freedom and for his treatment of them.[5]

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 be able to support themselves after emancipation.[6][7][8]

Death and Legacy

John Berry Meachum died at his pulpit on February 19, 1854. His wife Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad, and was arrested the following year 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.[9]

The First African Baptist Church (now the First Baptist Church) continues to operate on Bell St. in St. Louis.[10][11]

References

  1. ↑ John Meachum, http://www.blackpast.org
  2. ↑ Tim 0"Neil, St. Louis Post Dispatch, " First Black Minister Founds Church, Buys Freedom for Slaves" , April 26, 2014
  3. ↑ Robert W.Tabscott John Berry Meachum Defied The Law to Educate Blacks, St. Louis Beacon, August 25, 2009
  4. ↑ Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners In The South,1790-1915, University of Illinois Press, 1997
  5. ↑ Vandervelde, Lea, Redemption Songs, Courtroom Stories of Slavery, OUP USA 2013
  6. ↑ Dennis L. Hurst, “The Reverend John Berry Meachum (1789-1854) of St. Louis: Prophet and Entrepreneurial Educator in Historiographical Perspective,” The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History 7:2 (2004);
  7. ↑ John B. Meachum, An Address to All the Colored Students of the United States, 1846, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina]
  8. ↑ Eric Gardner, Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2010
  9. ↑ Reenactors celebrate end of slavery at Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, St. Louis Public Radio, May 9, 2015
  10. ↑ Donnie D. Bellamy, “The Education of Blacks in Missouri Prior to 1861,” The Journal of Negro History 59:2 (1974)
  11. ↑ "First Baptist Church," http://www.historyhappenshere.org
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