E’ry day this month, Philly’s 7th Ward, in partnership with the Center for Black Educator Development, will highlight a “Black Educator Hall of Famer.“ But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month. February is just the Blackest. Every day is an ongoing opportunity to learn and teach the colossal impact Black educators have had on society.
John Berry Meachum
John Berry Meachum was born enslaved in Goochland County, VA, on May 3, 1789. He was the son of a Baptist preacher, and as a kid, he was apprenticed to a white carpenter, where he learned the craft of cabinetmaking and coopering. His ability to learn and execute his work well secured his freedom. He had earned enough money from working to purchase his freedom at the age of twenty-one, as well as his father’s freedom.
While enslaved, Meachum met his wife, Mary, when he was moved by his captor. In 1815, five years after purchasing his freedom, he traveled to St. Louis, where his wife, Mary, and their children had been taken after Mary’s owner moved from Kentucky to Missouri. In St. Louis, Meachum used his talents as a carpenter and cooper—a cooper is someone who makes or repairs barrels—to save his earnings to purchase freedom for his wife and children.
As Meachum did that, he became active in St. Louis’s antebellum Black community. He met John Mason Peck, a white Baptist missionary who had just moved to the state to start a worship and educational center for Native Americans. Peck sought to do the same for Black folks. Meachum also met other northern missionaries, and with Peck, they taught him how to read and write and convinced him that the way to lift his people out of oppression was to educate them.
Both men, Meachum and Peck, built the church building, and after Meachum was ordained, he opened the first African Baptist Church. This institution and others like it provided Blacks, both enslaved and free, with a measure of hope and solace in a society that increasingly devalued and exploited them; it attracted up to 300 pupils and did not charge tuition to those who could not afford it. Meachum and his wife were also conductors on the Underground Railroad, using both the church and their home.
Once in his presence, Meachum taught them the carpentry trade to support themselves—nearly every person repaid Meachum, so he could do the same for others.
At the time of Meachum’s education work, there was a city ordinance against the education of African Americans — denying them the skills of literacy — meant to keep enslaved individuals from questioning the legitimacy of white-dominated society. Meachum defied the order and was eventually arrested for educating Black folk, as well as freeing them. This led to the closure of the church. However, as he used his vocation to free himself and his family, he continued to free Black people, in mind and body.
After his release from jail, Meachum used his talents to become an entrepreneur. He used his earnings to buy a boat. He renovated the boat—since he was a carpenter—converting it into a library and school. Because city ordinances applied to what happened on the land, the waters didn’t come under the same jurisdiction. Meachum anchored his “new school” on the Mississippi River and opened it to enslaved and free people to continue learning, but on the boat. This school on the boat was known as the Floating Freedom School.
The work of Meachum and Mary Meachum on the Underground Railroad is now commemorated at the Mary Meachum Crossing in St. Louis, where the two led enslaved persons across the Mississippi River to freedom in Illinois. The First African Baptist Church (now the First Baptist Church) remains in operation in St. Louis. John Berry Meachum died while preaching on February 19, 1854. The Floating Freedom School operated until Meachum’s death.
Happy Black History Month and make sure to read up on John Berry Meachum, a member of the Black Educator Hall of Fame.
