John Barry Meacham.

This is a name that I think everyone needs to add to their list of real American heroes.

And he is the hero of the story you're about to hear in this episode.

My name is John DeLore.

I'm an editor on this podcast and I'm really happy that we are revisiting this episode

here during Black History Month because, as you all know, this is a show about places,

but specifically it's about the places that might get looked over or passed by in the

travel guides.

And this episode got me thinking about how history books kind of function the same way.

The big events and the big characters get full chapters, but there's a whole set of quiet

local events and people who get left out.

And the story of the floating freedom school is that kind of story.

It happens on the periphery of the map on the edge of St. Louis, out in the Mississippi

River.

And it's happening on the edge, the periphery of a larger historical movement.

And so it's the kind of story that we need to find and share so that the floating freedom

school and the Reverend John Barry Meacham are more widely known about.

So without further ado, enjoy the floating freedom school.

If you were a Black child in the 1840s, Missouri, in order to get to school, you'd have

to come here to the River Shoreline.

The city of St. Louis sits right on the Mississippi River.

And in the middle of that river, there used to be a steamboat.

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