MISSOURI'S EARLY BLACK PREACHERS WERE BOLD EDUCATED AND VISIONARY
Missouri outlawed reading for black people in 1847. The very same law outlawed black preachers. To counter this gross statutory denial of black rights, a brave black preacher and business man (barrel maker) in the 1840s in St. Louis, named Rev. John Berry Meachum, astutely anchored a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.
Each day a skiff that Rev. Meachum owned would ferry black students back and forth to school. One of these students was James Mitchell Turner, Esq. After the Civil War, he, Turner established public schools for black students across the state, enabling black students to become educated and worthy like himself.
One of the noted black preachers who was arrested in the 1850's for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in Independence, Missouri, was Hon. Hiram Rhodes Revel, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1854. Revels states that he "was imprisoned for preaching the gospel to negroes, though he was not subjected to violence." Revels would later become the first black man elected to the U. S. Congress; he was a U. S. Senator from Mississippi elected in 1870. He resigned in 1871 to assume the Presidency of Alcorn College, the first U. S. black land grant college.
MISSOURI'S EARLY BLACK PREACHERS WERE BOLD EDUCATED AND VISIONARY
Missouri outlawed reading for black people in 1847. The very same law outlawed black preachers. To counter this gross statutory denial of black rights, a brave black preacher and business man (barrel maker) in the 1840s in St. Louis, named Rev. John Berry Meachum, astutely anchored a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.
Each day a skiff that Rev. Meachum owned would ferry black students back and forth to school. One of these students was James Mitchell Turner, Esq. After the Civil War, he, Turner established public schools for black students across the state, enabling black students to become educated and worthy like himself.
One of the noted black preachers who was arrested in the 1850's for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in Independence, Missouri, was Hon. Hiram Rhodes Revel, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1854. Revels states that he "was imprisoned for preaching the gospel to negroes, though he was not subjected to violence." Revels would later become the first black man elected to the U. S. Congress; he was a U. S. Senator from Mississippi elected in 1870. He resigned in 1871 to assume the Presidency of Alcorn College, the first U. S. black land grant college.