JAMES MILTON TURNER AND JOHN BERRY MEACHUM: MISSOURI'S BLACK VISIONARIES AND EDUCATORS!

James Milton Turner Elementary was the name of our grade school in Meachum Park, Missouri. It was named for James Milton Turner, who established public education for blacks after the Civil War. Turner was a protege of the great, though little known, John Berry Meachum, a self-liberated slave in St. Louis, who purchased his and his family's freedom; who founded and pastored the African Baptist Church; who founded a school for blacks on a steamboat, in the 1850's that was moored in the middle of the Mississippi River, under Federal jurisdiction, which James Milton Turner (above) attended, furtively, learning being outlawed in Missouri for blacks in 1847. Students were transported to the school aboard Meachum's skiff, daily. Meachum also established a barrel-making business, whose proceeds funded the school and the church, in which slaves he had purchased earned wages, learned a skill and bought their own freedom through wage deductions. He died in 1855, regrettably, and his wife was hanged in the later 1850's for helping slaves escape to Illinois. The school also died with them!