At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach people of color to read and write, Meachum operated a school in the church's basement.

Meachum also circumvented a Missouri state law banning education for black people by creating the Floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.

As a young man, he guided 75 enslaved people from Kentucky to their freedom in Indiana, a free state.

John and Mary also helped runaway enslaved people across the Mississippi and into Illinois along the Underground Railroad.

In 1846, Meachum spoke at the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia and published the pamphlet An Address to All of the Colored Citizens of the United States, which stressed the importance of education and self-respect.

[3] After they accumulated more money, the father and son walked to Kentucky and freed Meachum's mother and siblings.

He agreed and led the group across the Ohio River to Harrison County, Indiana, where his parents had settled.

[4] According to Wonning, Paul and Susannah Mitchem were an elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslaved people.

[4] In St. Louis, Meachum met white Baptist missionaries John Mason Peck and James Welch who established the Sabbath School for Negroes in 1817.

Peck in 1825, Meachum constructed a separate building at the same location for the First African Baptist Church and school.

[11][a] A deep-toned missionary spirit, uncommon order and correctness among the slave population, and strict and regular discipline in the church, were among the fruits of his arduous and preserving labor.Beginning in 1822, Meachum taught religious and secular classes for free and enslaved African Americans.

It also prohibited them from having independent black religious services without a white law enforcement officer present, or from holding any meetings for education or religion.

[1][14][b] In response, Meachum moved his classes to a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, which was subject to federal law[4] and outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.

[15][16] This allowed Meachum to resume his educational practices to people of color, free and enslaved, eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws.

[7] After the Civil War, he founded the Lincoln Institute, the first school in Missouri for higher education for black students.

[18] Meachum and his wife Mary helped enslaved people gain their freedom via he Underground Railroad.

[1][20] He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory, which was staffed by escaped slaves,[21] who saved up their earnings.

And I would recommend in these schools pious teachers, either white or colored, who would take all pains with the children to bring them up in piety, and in industrious habits.

We must endeavor to have our children look up a little, for they are too many to lie in idleness and dishonor.After his death, Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad.