"Flight To Freedom" by Albert Stewart, Sr. Poster

The First Nationally Recognised Underground Railroad site in Missouri. On this site, on May 21,1855, on the banks of this Mississippi River, at Saint Louis. American slaves of African decent secretly assembled here. In the early morning hours they boarded a small boat with the hope of gaining their freedom by rowing across to Illinois , a free state. The slaves were willing to face death and risk everything instead of remaining in the south with it's tyrannical slavery system. Mary Meachum, a free Negro woman, used her home to conceal runaways on their road to freedom. She was the wife of abolitionist, John Berry Meachum, founder and first Pastor of Saint Louis' First African Baptist Church. Freeman, a black Illinois abolitionist, brought wagons to the Illinois shores for the desperate flight to Alton. He was wounded by gunfire from supporters of the Missouri slave network in Illinois. Mary Meachum and a black man identified only by the name Issac, were charged in St. Louis criminal court for assisting escaped slaves and using her home as a "depot" on the Underground Railroad. Charges against Issac were eventually dropped but it is not readily known what happened to Mary Meachum.