The other day I took a bike ride along the Riverfront Trail<\/a> in St. Louis.\u00a0 The trail runs north from Laclede\u2019s Landing, following the Mississippi until it crosses over the river at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Winding through flood walls, junkyards, at least one homeless encampment, and other industrial sites, the trail offers a cross section of a part of the city that the average pedestrian or motorist never sees.<\/p>\n Near the Merchant\u2019s Bridge, I was surprised to discover an historical site called the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing. Across from a corrugated metal building, a mural on a white concrete wall depicts several dark figures\u2014escaping slaves\u2014boarding a canoe on the moonlit Mississippi. In the other corner of the painting, menacing figures train rifles on them.<\/p>\n I teach a high school course on African American history and literature, so I took note of the mural (and snapped a picture of it as well), planning on mentioning it to my students that Monday. I biked to within eyesight of the bridge then turned around to head back to the trailhead. On my return, I noticed a plaque near the memorial. Although I almost sped by it in my rush to get home (I was late), I turned back and took the time to read it.<\/p>\n The marker explained that on the morning of May 21, 1855, a group of runaway slaves, guided by a free black woman named Mary Meachum, crossed the Mississippi River at that spot near the Merchant\u2019s Bridge. \u00a0On the Illinois side, they encountered a policeman and other authorities. Shots were fired. Some escaped. One member of the group was killed. Mary Meachum, the widow of prominent black clergyman John Barry Meachum, was arrested and jailed, and identified in the press as a participant in the Underground Railroad.<\/p>\n All of this was fascinating, but what struck me with particular force was a detail in the middle of the text on the marker. Some of the slaves involved in the incident belonged to \u201cthe prominent St. Louisan Henry Shaw.\u201d<\/p>\n In this day and age in America, no doubt as a result of the labors of activists and historians of the African American experience, most reasonably enlightened people have considered the paradoxes of our national ideals and heroes: that Thomas Jefferson, for example, who wrote that line in the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal, owned slaves (and fathered children by them). One of George Washington\u2019s slaves actually fled from Washington\u2019s estate during Washington\u2019s time as our first President.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the revelation that Henry Shaw owned slaves struck me with surprising force. It hit close to home. I live on the periphery of Shaw\u2019s garden (which opened four years after the incident commemorated at the Freedom Crossing). I coach my daughters\u2019 soccer practices in Tower Grove Park, which Shaw bequeathed to the city of St. Louis in 1868. On a couple of occasions I\u2019ve toured Shaw\u2019s house. I\u2019ve held my daughters up to the windows of the mausoleum where Shaw is buried. For a while, my oldest daughter even used Shaw as a kind of yard stick for how old people and things are. \u201cWas Henry Shaw alive then?\u201d she would ask. In my mind, Shaw had always been a kindly, philanthropic environmentalist\u2014not a slavemaster.<\/p>\n