When James started school his sister practically had to drag him there - he knew everything outside was more exciting than anything he'd find inside. Until his teacher taught him otherwise. 'We make our own light here,' Reverend Meachum told James. And through hard work, they did - until their school was shut down by a new law forbidding African American education in Missouri. Determined to continue teaching his students, Reverend Meachum decided to build a new school - a floating school in the Mississippi River, just outside the boundary of the unjust law.