If you were a black child in 1840's 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.

On that steamboat was a rather unusual school.

If you were a student at the school, you'd take a little skiff across the river to board

the boat.

The Mississippi River would be the backdrop for all of your lessons.

It may sound like something out of a children's storybook, but this steamboat school was actually

an ingenious way of getting around a racist law.

I'm Johanna Mayer, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today, we remember the floating freedom school, and the man who founded it, after this.

If you were a person living in Missouri in the 1820's, there's a good chance you'd

have heard of John Barry Meacham.

He owned two brick houses in St. Louis, and a farm right across the river in Illinois.

He'd made good money in the barrel making and steamboat businesses.

He was skilled in carpentry.

He made cabinets, but that was only one side of John.

He had this sort of secret life that the good white people obviously didn't know about.

One more is curator of urban landscape and community identity at the Missouri Historical

Society.

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