We Should Never Forget Why We Needed A Floating Freedom School

The story of White people interfering with Black people’s ability to live and learn freely seems deeply embedded in America’s cultural landscape. We have White conservatives lambasting critical race theory and The 1619 Project as invalid and harmful in the modern era. White folks, the ones who advocate for “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/magazine/memory-laws.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">modern </a>memory laws,” desperately want America to forget about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, or any policy that shows how White people created the systemic racism Black people endure today. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And when there’s racism, there will be resistance. Have you ever heard the story of John Berry Meachum? Born in Virginia in 1789 as a slave, he became an influential abolitionist. Once he turned 21, Meachum’s skills as a carpenter gave him the funds necessary to <a href="https://blackthen.com/when-missouri-banned-education-for-all-black-this-man-responded-with-a-floating-freedom-school/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">buy his freedom</a>. However, this was not something all Black people could do because buying your freedom required the permission of a White slaver. <a href="https://momentum.medium.com/we-should-never-forget-why-we-needed-a-floating-freedom-school-4dafcd674e01">Click Here</a>