©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2004 Dennis L. Durst.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

Meachum, the Ethiopia Motif, and Black National Identity

"Ethiopianism" is a term that has gained a specific meaning in scholarly literature on the history of black nationalism. As an ideology with a specialized following in African American culture (or, perhaps more accurately, as a subculture thereof), Wilson Jeremiah Moses has described Ethiopianism as "the millennial Christianity of various sects and cults arising at the end of the nineteenth century." Moses has pointed out, however, that the theme has roots in the earlier rhetoric of black missionaries with a history stretching back into the eighteenth century. Often in the antebellum era, the Ethiopia theme served as a call to liberate the continent of Africa from European colonialism, yet with the concurrent call for Christianizing it by means of African-American missionaries.³⁴ Patrick Rael has noted that Episcopalian minister Alexander Crummell utilized the Ethiopia passage so as to buttress the case for colonization as a solution to the problem of slavery. Rael's analysis of the problematic quality of the "fortunate fall" thesis for later black nationalism(s), and the countervalent "unfortunate fall" thesis casts the ambiguity of the Ethiopia theme into even bolder relief. ³⁵ For the majority of free blacks in America, colonization was not a live option, and so the dream of an Ethiopia-like civilization came to be transplanted, so to speak, by black preachers such as Meachum, into American soil. Meachum's emphasis on Ethiopianism stressed the efforts of former slaves, particularly free blacks in the North, to accomplish that end. Furthermore, as Joanne Pope Melish has noted, many black leaders in the 1830s and beyond refrained from forcing a choice between self-referential terms "colored" or "African" so as to maximize both goals of claiming their rights as Americans and invoking their solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Africa. But it was clearly the former concern that was predominant in Meachum's era -- it would take several generations before the needs and concerns of African nations became clearly articulated and advocated by African American leaders. "They chose the language of physical difference as their primary form of identification as a present, living group in order to avoid weakening their claim to American citizenship;" Melish argues, continuing, "at the same time, they renewed their historical identification with the Africa of antiquity-emphasizing the glories of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, whose achievements stood as a powerful rebuttal to accusations of innate inferiority associated with that physical identity."³⁶

Meachum was not the first African-American to build on the Ethiopia theme as a call for social change in America. In 1829, for example, Robert Alexander Young, a New York City preacher, had published the "Ethiopian Manifesto." An apocalyptic jeremiad, this text offered both comfort to blacks in America and a blistering rebuke to white slaveholders, promising divine retribution for their crimes against African slaves. Thus Young mingled external and internal foci in a "pamphlet of protest." The sense of peoplehood for the black community, reinforced by social injustice, was often mediated in black preaching through biblical language such as the Exodus trope. For Young, the primary biblical metaphor of peoplehood was the Ethiopia trope that offered a stark contrast between their position in American society and their potential as a community:

Ethiopians! The power of Divinity having within us, as man, implanted a sense of the due and prerogatives belonging to you, a people, of whom we were of your race, in part born, as a mirror we trust, to reflect to you from a review of ourselves, the dread condition in which you do at this day stand. We do, therefore, to the accomplishment of our purpose, issue this but a brief of our grand manifesto, herefrom requiring the attention towards us of every native, or those proceeding in descent from the Ethiopian or African people; a regard to your welfare being the great and inspiring motive which leads us to this our undertaking.³⁷

Some 17 years later, John Berry Meachum evoked the Ethiopia theme in his Address. Meachum's Address has failed to garner the degree of attention from historians that protest literature or other Negro Convention speeches have -- most notably Henry Highland Garnet's famous 1843 call for insurrection - likely because of the mainstream position that he stakes out with regard to a range of issues in African American life at the time.³⁸ Perhaps its lack of an incendiary quality and its use of arguments well-established in the convention speeches by 1846, when compared with the content of other public addresses of the day, rendered it simply too mundane to gain widespread attention.

Although Meachum's subtle approach might lead scholars to view the Address as unremarkable, his particular application of the biblical metaphor of Ethiopia is noteworthy, particularly when examined in contrast to the Exodus motif even more dominant and widespread in black preaching. This elusive topic comes into even better focus when refracted through the prism of Meachum's life experiences.

As Glaude and others have rightly pointed out, the Exodus theme was extremely important in communal identity-formation for slaves and former slaves alike. Glaude argues that "Nation language emerged in African American political discourse as a synonym for peoplehood, a way of grounding solidaristic efforts in an understanding of America's racial, hegemonic order."³⁹ Whereas the Puritans of an earlier era had held an ideal of America as a promised land, slaves recognized in the predominant system of slavery a society run by a new set of greedy Pharaohs. The power of this inverted theme as prophetic social critique can hardly be overstated. Yet for Meachum, who had by this time lived as a free person for more than thirty years, the theme of Ethiopia was his rallying cry of the day. Several points of contrast between the two tropes deserve elucidation.

The Exodus theme was a theme of journey and pilgrimage. The middle passage had been an uprooting experience that can scarcely be imagined for the terror and anguish it evoked-a storied experience kept alive in the collective memory of slaves.⁴⁰ Add to that memory the unsettled life of slavery in which taking root in a community was impossible for many reasons. Slaves were often, at the capricious whim of their masters, being sold and thus torn from their kinfolk and friends, perhaps to be sent several states distant, often never to see their loved ones again. Even with relatively kind masters, as in Meachum's case, the slave still had no choice but to move when the master moved, wreaking havoc on natural familial ties. Family destruction and the demeaning of labor reinforced the rootless, pilgrim-like ethos that found its resonance in black preaching of the Exodus and wilderness wandering narratives of the Bible. Slave songs contained dual messages, with Canaan land standing as a ubiquitous metaphor of heaven, but also symbolizing a prophetic cry for emancipation or escape to the "free" northern states.⁴¹

The Ethiopia theme stood in tension with the Exodus motif. The repetition of references to Ethiopia in Meachum's Address evinced his impatience with a transitory existence. Meachum envisioned the black community as a renewed civilization, and its members as paragons of success in their own right, and by their own efforts. They could practice capitalism in ways equal to or better than any competitors, if only they could and would seize the opportunity. Ethiopia had a mythic quality resonant of the continent of Africa and of both past and future greatness for a people uprooted yet planted anew in the soil of America. Albert J. Raboteau comments that:

All interpreters of the verse agreed that Egypt and Ethiopia referred to 'the African race.' In a kind of mythic geography, nineteenth-century black Americans identified Ethiopia and Egypt with their own African origins and looked to those ancient civilizations as exemplars of a glorious African past, surely as legitimate a fictive pedigree as white American claims of descent from Greco-Roman civilization."⁴²

The Ethiopia theme held a scope and a dignity that fit well with Meachum's aspirations for black solidarity. Through speaking at the 1846 National Negro Convention in Philadelphia, and through publication of his Address, Meachum sought a national audience for his views on the education of black children, his entrepreneurial vision, and his call to unity under the idealistic banner of "Ethiopia." Meachum also served in that same period on a committee for the promotion of the National Convention of the Colored Citizens of America, projected for 1847. Meachum outlined the purposes of that event as including, ". . .to take into consideration the general education of our youth, and also the general union of those free people of color that are now scattered in different directions in the United States of America."⁴³ According to Jane and William Pease, by the 1840s the emphasis of these conventions was shifting away from an assimilationist stance dominant in the 1830s and toward an emphasis on black nationalism with its themes of self-sufficiency and political pressure on the white power structure. ⁴⁴ Elements of both impulses are detectable in Meachum's Address, and the document shows him to be a figure who defies easy categorization, and this, in my view, has contributed to his marginality. His multiple roles-preacher, educator, entrepreneur, national spokesman placed him in a situation of great tension and frustration. In 1846 he offered a sweeping agenda for a national reform of black education, the cutting edge of a reclaimed national civilization encapsulated in the vision of Ethiopia. Yet in 1847, his own state legislature virtually forced him to move his classroom to a boat anchored amid the swelter and stench of the Mississippi river. Then tensions between a utopian vision and disappointing reality doubtless inflicted a severe psychological toll.

As has been noted, Meachum followed a pattern for bringing slaves into freedom that was subtle, discreet, and largely non-confrontational. Though from one vantage point this might appear to make him complicit in slavery, from another vantage point this activity shows resourcefulness and ingenuity. This pattern of laboring to purchase the freedom of not only his family, but also numerous other slaves instilled in Meachum a deep belief in the power of "industriousness." This became a watchword he was not reticent to proclaim to others. His emphasis on industriousness gave an entrepreneurial cast to his educational philosophy.

In order to become a great nation like Ethiopia, much had to be done. Meachum's themes of moral reform, manual labor schools, entrepreneurial drive, and black national unity illustrate the emphasis of the conventions on moral reform, exemplary living, and education as means to the goal of social "uplift." His sense of the corporate nature of this enterprise appears to be derived both from scripture and from his hardscrabble life. The twin forces of the authoritative biblical text and his own experience of success convinced him of the exemplary power of his personal values for the benefit of his community as a whole. Meachum utilized often the first-person plural pronoun "we" in building solidarity with his audience, primarily free blacks like himself. He also emphasized scriptures that focus upon unity, such as Ps. 133:1 "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"⁴⁵ Furthermore, he used the term "nation" to refer not to the United States, but to the African American community. The opening words of the Address evince a biblicist and providential view of human history in which African Americans played a vital role:

PROVIDENCE has placed us all on the shores of America-and God has said 'Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands To God' Psalm 68, 31. This being true, is it not necessary that some exertion should be made? Ought we not to use our influence and the means placed in our power for the consummation of this end. All will admit that we are capable of elevating ourselves, for we have once been distinguished as one of the greatest nations, and it is reasonable to suppose that what has once been can be again. Sin has degraded us, but righteousness will exalt us.⁴⁶

Meachum called for unification of black folk as a means of promoting education eventually leading to exaltation.⁴⁷ Meachum tapped into a rhetorical tradition stressing uplift-but was more concerned with black self-improvement than with any alleged effect their exemplary character might have upon recalcitrant whites. His tripartite program of religion, education, and financial resourcing was aimed squarely at his own extended community:⁴⁸

All will admit that we are capable of elevating ourselves, for we have once been distinguished as one of the greatest nations, and it is reasonable to suppose that what has once been can be again. Sin has degraded us, but righteousness will exalt us. We are under positive moral obligation to effect this object, by our religious influence, by mental culture, and by appropriating a portion of our worldly goods to the accomplishment of this end.⁴⁹

During the mid-1840s the Negro conventions were growing increasingly polarized between factions emphasizing moral suasion and those emphasizing a form of political action that embraced violence if necessary.⁵⁰ Meachum appears, on the whole, to have aligned more closely with the "moral suasion" side of the debate. Nowhere in the document did he advocate any course of action approaching insurrection. Instead, Meachum focused almost entirely on the hortatory mode of discourse in internal or "immanent" conversation with his fellow-blacks. His harshest criticisms were of those within the fold, his own people, in phrases that today would usually be perceived as "blaming the victim:"

It is a common thing for people to suppose that our oppression is occasioned by severe restrictions and disabilities laid upon us by others, but the truth is you keep yourselves down, for as long as you continue to speak evil one of the other and use abusive epithets and backbite, ridicule and reproach one another with opprobrious names, just so long will you be oppressed, for it is an old and true maxim, "if you do not respect yourself others will not respect you."⁵¹

These words, harsh though they may seem, place Meachum in the long tradition of the prophet whose uncompromising ethical stance leads him to rebuke an already suffering people. In contrast with Young's 1829 pamphlet centered on the Ethiopia trope, criticism of the slaveholder is muted at best within Meachum's rhetoric.⁵² In a sense, Meachum's rebuke of white oppression took the form of a studied silence. Doubtless we might also surmise that Meachum held certain white co-workers, such as the white educators who had assisted him over the years, in high esteem. Meachum's words, as well as his unconcern with speaking directly to whites in the Address, bespoke his sense of the inherent abilities of those whom he did address-his fellow-blacks in general, and free blacks in particular.⁵³ His was a program of positive action, of self-emancipation, not a patient waiting for the conscience of white America to awaken.

Meachum's references to fratricidal infighting in the community make even more sense in light of the bitter disputes within the conventions, and within the pages of the various anti-slavery newspapers that were proliferating by this time.⁵⁴ As a centrist figure perhaps Meachum strove to be a mediating figure between factions in the free black community. As far as the Address goes, Meachum placed the responsibility for fostering unity and for effectuating positive societal benefits by unified action on the shoulders of his immediate audience. The cacophony of internal factionalism may be perceived as the subtext of Meachum's repeated insistence on unity as the only means to improving conditions for blacks in America. He was a Baptist and an evangelical, but he tempered the individualism typical of revivalist preaching with a strong sense of community identity and co-operation.

Within the Address, Meachum held forth for several pages on the themes of death and the final judgment, the threat of damnation and the call to repentance.⁵⁵ But unlike the pious personal moralism of much of the preaching of his contemporaries, by revisiting the Ethiopia theme with which the Address had opened, Meachum emphasized the corporate identity of African Americans, as well as corporate salvation. This motif drew Meachum back to a communal focus found in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Scriptures in the writers' call for national repentance, a theme often lost in the individualistic conversionism of antebellum evangelicalism. He cried out: "O, Ethiopia, have you obeyed the voice of God Almighty, that spoke by the voice of thunder, to the Israelites on the Mount Sinai?"⁵⁶ Thus Meachum made explicit a familiar linkage in African-American preaching, namely, the continuity of the black community with ancient Israel, with an attendant sense of covenantal peoplehood and a yearning for freedom from slavery.⁵⁷ Meachum recontextualized this peoplehood for his audience within the identity of Ethiopia, a great African civilization.

For Meachum, concern for the afterlife and diligent provisioning for this life were all of one piece. His narrative interwove attention to eternity and attention to the mundane:

Then why sit ye here and look at one another? Why not get enough to last as long as you and all your family live. Don't sit there any longer. Rise and go to work like men, and buy property and live like men and women in this world. If you have not got religion, God sends rain on the just and the unjust. But while you are receiving all these good things remember, O man, that thou hast an immortal soul that has to be saved or lost to all eternity. Then let us wake up, not only in regard to earthly concerns, but also in regard to eternity, which is just before us.⁵⁸

Here Meachum constructed the American dream in general, and property ownership in particular, not as a mere wistful aspiration, but as a positive duty to be carried out in tandem with (and ostensibly in an unproblematic harmony with) a concern for one's salvation. An education that focused on developing the character traits as well as the manual skills of industry would empower his people to realize the dream. Thus, Meachum urged unity and a renewal of commitment to the manual labor school effort on a national scale in order to bring to reality his sweeping vision of African Americans as a people of destiny.

Prophet, Yes; Messiah, No

So where does Meachum "fit" with regard to messianic figures such as the insurrectionists on one end of the spectrum, and the suffering servant-like "Uncle Toms" at the opposite end? I contend here that Meachum does not qualify as a messiah figure in these polarized modes of expression, but does qualify in important ways as a figure situated between these poles, namely as prophet, understood in the sociological terms defined by Max Weber, with attention to the aforementioned work of Wilson Jeremiah Moses.

In his epochal work, The Sociology of Religion, Weber set forth the characteristics of the religious figure of the "prophet" in a profile derived from a comparative examination of the diverse traditions of the world's religions. At the outset of his analysis, Weber bracketed consideration of the prophet as "bringer of salvation," as, in his view, this identity was not a universal characteristic of prophets, though it is an important element of many prophets in religious history. Weber defined a prophet as ". . . a purely individual bearer of charisma, who by virtue of his mission proclaims a religious doctrine or divine commandment."⁵⁹

It is important to note that, despite this individualistic emphasis in Weber, the prophetic motif, at least in Judaism and Christianity, has a significant communal importance as well. We need only think of Jeremiah's laments in the Hebrew Scriptures over the anguish of the people with whom he so passionately identified, and his resistance to the proclamations of doom God called him to announce. Or we could note Isaiah's suffering servant passages, some of which have a clearly "corporate" or national thrust.⁶⁰ Though the doctrine of prophetic speech is clearly religious, it is at the same time often aimed at social reform as a concomitant of individual repentance.⁶¹

Wilson Jeremiah Moses' analysis of black religious leadership with its communal emphasis becomes a valuable corrective to the individualistic ethos of Weber's articulation of the qualities of religious prophets. For example, among four major patterns Moses discovered in his broad and impressive investigation of "messianic" themes in black literature and in American culture more generally, is "the concept of the redemptive mission of the black race."⁶² Here I see Meachum's emphasis on Ethiopia as a marvelous case in point. Where I would differ from Moses is that the fourth of his categories, namely "prophetism" and "prophetic movement" elides the role of the prophet and the role of the messiah too readily. I am not convinced that prophetism is necessarily messianic in nature. I could concede that all messiahs are prophets, but would insist that not all prophets are messiahs or even meaningfully messianic. One might be a prophet without being, or even aspiring to be, a messiah figure, like, for example, John the Baptist in the New Testament.

For the mission of a messiah to have its potency, messiahs must by nature be rare individuals. Moses analyzes many figures, both real and imagined, who have been seen as messianic in opposite ways -- either as militants or as martyrs. The American literary imagination thus sorts into such categories figures like Henry Highland Garnet, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Du Bois's Dark Princess, Joe Louis, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Malcolm X. Moses's analysis of such tropes is nuanced and he is himself critical of ways that uncritical acceptance of such motifs has obscured, for example, a concern for democracy beyond the borders of the U. S. He concludes that "The paradox of African American history is that much of our social progress has been driven by the same zealous, narrow-minded, self-righteous Protestantism that has so often worked against us."⁶³ All these adjectives could apply to John Berry Meachum, and the question is, has the distaste of contemporary academia for such character traits itself pushed all-too-human figures like John Berry Meachum to the margin? Could it be we are drawn more readily to messiahs, whose vivid contours make them easier to categorize for analysis than a figure with multiple, even conflicting, roles, such as we find in a John Berry Meachum?

Prophets are more common than messiahs. Prophets can also be much more marginal and little-noticed. Messiahs tend to become focal points for followers and opponents alike-they are impossible to ignore. Prophets can be, and often are, ignored. Thus with regard to John Berry Meachum, I believe he is a prophet (in terms of Weber's description below), but not a messiah. Thus he loses any heroic allure a messiah might claim, but he gains authenticity as one more complex, nuanced, and conflicted figure of history-one of flesh and blood, not the idealized focus of an active literary imagination (while I hasten to add that such an imagination is valuable and necessary at times!).

So how, precisely, was John Berry Meachum a prophetic figure? Weber identifies of the traits that characterize the prophets of various religious communities. These traits include the prophet either as preacher of ethics or as exemplar, the prophet as laborer, and the prophet as preacher of a divine revelation. The life and writings of John Berry Meachum manifest all of these characteristics. Meachum personifies an ambiguous via media between the dominant mythic roles (militant, martyr) identified by Wilson Moses. While Moses' emphasis on the communal and symbolic power of messianic motifs in African American history shows greater nuance and applicability to the black religious context than Weber's individualism and historic literalism, Weber's articulation of the prophetic ethos shows promise for explicating a particular black figure like John Berry Meachum.

Weber identified two kinds of prophets in his analysis of various world religions: the ethical prophet, and the exemplary prophet. The former speaks for a god, and his preaching demands obedience to specific commands or general norms as an ethical duty. The latter shows the way to salvation by personal example, commending his own life's path to others.⁶⁴ Weber's distinction turns out to be one of emphasis rather than of a hard-and-fast demarcation. Both the ethical prophet and the exemplar are attempting to bring their followers to develop a harmonious Weltanschauung:

Regardless of whether a particular religious prophet is predominantly of the ethical or predominantly of the exemplary type, prophetic revelation involves for both the prophet himself and for his followers-and this is the common element to both varieties-a unified view of the world derived from a consciously integrated and meaningful attitude toward life. To the prophet, both the life of man and the world, both social and cosmic events, have a certain systematic and coherent meaning. To this meaning the conduct of mankind must be oriented if it is to bring salvation, for only in relation to this meaning does life obtain a unified and significant pattern.⁶⁵

John Berry Meachum fulfilled the prophetic motif in just such an integrating manner, thus I would apply to him the moniker of "ethical exemplar." In other words, his Address incorporates elements of biography with a subtext that in effect says, "I have worked to empower myself and others, now I am teaching you, my fellow African-Americans as a national community to imitate me, so we may accomplish self-empowerment by working together." His twin emphasis on piety and industriousness exemplifies this merging of the "cosmic" and the "social," characteristic of an integrated worldview.

Weber further stressed the distinction between prophetic and priestly forms of leadership within religious communities. One method of distinguishing them is what he labeled the "criterion of gratuitous service." Whereas the priest receives his living from performing religious services, through a system of fees or other means of remuneration, the prophet "propagates ideas for their own sake and not for fees, at least in any obvious or regulated form." Thus, in order to be, or at least to appear, free from the corruption of greed, prophets were willing to engage in labor.⁶⁶ Meachum, like many free blacks, had labored for his own emancipation. But what rendered his labor over the course of his lifetime prophetic was his labor on behalf of others in the quest for emancipation, then education and entrepreneurship, then "Ethiopia," or communal civilization-building for the black nation within a nation.

Weber identified prophecy in a strict sense with the offer of "a substantively new revelation" or the prophet as one "speaking in the name of a special divine injunction."⁶⁷ Given Meachum's biblicist Baptist denominational affiliation, and the saturation of his Address with quotations and allusions to existing scripture, he is clearly not a prophet in the sense of bringing a new revelation. But in terms of "speaking in the name of a special divine injunction," and appropriating scriptures in ways uniquely meaningful for African-American experiences and aspirations, the quality of newness and freshness is to some degree evident in Meachum. A certain revelatory quality may be seen in the Address and its elaboration of the themes of emancipation, education, and the Ethiopia motif, when combined with Meachum's subtle and creative activism in founding the Floating Freedom School.

Conclusion

John Berry Meachum's Floating Freedom School continued its work into the 1850s until he died in his pulpit in February 1854. The anonymous author of his obituary underscored the race norms of the St. Louis community reminding readers and later scholars of the context in which Meachum worked, writing: "The deceased was one of our oldest colored citizens, and enjoyed the confidence of his white brethren, among whom he was extensively acquainted."⁶⁸ Meachum's value to St. Louis, even in his death, this author construed in terms commensurate with a hegemonic white paternalism.

"Powerless" in conventional terms, John Berry Meachum, while technically a freedman, labored and achieved much even while under the shadow of the complexional policies of Missouri. By means of a vision saturated with biblical allusion and imagery, and through multi-vocational toil as preacher, entrepreneur, educator, and public speaker, he promoted a broader educational vision than had the racially and regionally stunted vision of leaders like Governor John C. Edwards.

Lineaments of Meachum's influence can be traced in other elements of the history of black education in St. Louis. At least five other schools dedicated to the education of black children were established and then quickly suppressed in the 1840s -- all of them church affiliated (Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, and Catholic). After St. Louis had been taken by Union forces during the Civil War, William Greenleaf Eliot, a white Unitarian minister, worked with a businessman named James Yeatman to establish the "American Freedom School." This educational venture was established to give a basic education to recently-freed and fugitive slaves. The school was begun at a church site in 1863, but the building was burned two days later, presumably (though not provably) by opponents of integrated education, yet the school continued on in another location. At the end of the Civil War, Missouri's new constitution of 1865 mandated education for black children. That year, five schools with a combined enrollment of 1,600 were opened and administered by the "Board of Education for Colored Schools."⁶⁹ The spectre of "separate but equal," however, was not lifted in legal terms until 1954, and the remaining challenges facing de facto efforts at integration are well-known in St. Louis as in most of America's urban centers.

In an era of the broken promises of reconstruction, another figure remarkably like Meachum arose, namely, Booker T. Washington. Washington was and is criticized for being an assimilationist, and for too-readily embracing values some have perceived to be the cultural baggage of whites.⁷⁰ Yet his Tuskegee Institute may be seen, in light of Meachum's Address, as in many ways a fulfillment of Meachum's vision for manual labor schools.⁷¹

In 1997, an integrated, private elementary school begun by a group of St. Louis Presbyterians consciously invoked the memory of Meachum's educational vision in the choice of both the name and the emphasis of their educational venture. The "Freedom School," located in suburban University City, has set forth in its promotional literature the following mission statement: "The Freedom School will provide a Christ-centered, challenging elementary education in a safe and nurturing environment to multi-ethnic students from Christian and non-Christian families. We strive to fully develop the God-given potential of each child to be a life long learner and to positively serve the community."⁷² Both the title of "Freedom School," and the cooperation of various ethnic groups in the enterprise indicate its debt to the Meachum legacy. Thus Meachum's vision continues to inspire church-based Missouri educators.

The tensions between moral suasionism and insurrectionism in the antebellum period, or between integrationism and black nationalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, exemplify a perennial struggle between two means to a shared end of a better life for Americans of African descent. While John Berry Meachum urged black and white co-operation in the education of African-American youth, he also embraced the notion of nationhood or peoplehood for the black community, and employed the Biblical metaphor of Ethiopia to evoke a sense of rootedness, dignity, respectability, and destiny. This tension within Meachum's vision could perhaps illuminate other "centrist" figures in antebellum black leadership roles who have drifted to the margins of history. The arguments of the 1840s over the direction of the convention movement have important elements of continuing relevance today, as Eddie S. Glaude has eloquently argued.⁷³ Meachum passionately proclaimed:

UNION should be our constant watchword-it should be the standard to which all of us should rally. As in family relations, so in national affairs, --for example, a man and his wife are at variance, they disagree among themselves, but let any thing arise pertaining to the interest of the whole family, all minor differences and opinions are forthwith forgotten and they become united as one. Let us then, at this important crisis when a matter is pending which is bearing upon our present and eternal destiny, lose sight of all party spirit and sectarian feelings, and unite in one bond of love, for, as says the Psalmist, "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."⁷⁴

Lest this essay be perceived as hagiography, let me hasten to emphasize that Meachum's vision was in key respects overly idealistic. As subsequent developments have shown, the barriers posed by systemic and individualized racism have been formidable, and piety and hard work by themselves have been hardly sufficient to overcome them. Any simple solution to the struggle has been elusive. The "American dream" is not the panacea Meachum's words might lead us to believe, but African-American leaders today also continue to lament the liabilities inherent in the dissolution of a sense of community, as did Meachum. No single proposal has yet proven to be a "north star" to which all African Americans can give unqualified assent, leading many to question whether a uniform prescription is a feasible goal. Yet internal debate in a community is not necessarily negative or destructive, and often results in progress. As scholars continue to articulate what they perceive as the best impulses found in integrationism and black nationalism, we still find Meachum's vision in the oft-cited maxim "think globally, act locally."⁷⁵ The values he enunciated with regard to ethically-disciplined living, community participation, educational empowerment, and the solidarity evoked by a transcendent sense of destiny, remain worthy of critical reflection today.

Part I | Notes