James Milton Turner (1840 –1915) was a post Civil War political leader, activist, educator, and diplomat. Turner was born into slavery in St. Louis, Missouri. When he was a child, he was sold on the steps of the St Louis courthouse for $50. His father, John Turner, was a "horse doctor" who was eventually able to purchase freedom for himself and his family. At fourteen, James Turner attended Oberlin College in Ohio for one term until he had to return to St. Louis to care for his family, following his father's death in 1855. There, Turner attended John Berry Meachum's floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River, which Meachum had set up to evade the Missouri law against education for blacks that was passed in 1854. When the American Civil War broke out, Turner enlisted in the Union Army and served as a body servant for Col. Madison Miller. Miller's brother-in-law, Missouri Governor Thomas Fletcher, appointed Turner assistant superintendent of Missouri schools. He helped establish the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, the first institution of higher education for African-Americans in Missouri. The Institute's name was later changed to Lincoln University. It began as Lincoln Institute in 1866 and was conceived and supported by the black soldiers who served with the 62nd and 65th Regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops Infantry. In 1868 he was installed as the principal of Lincoln School the first school for blacks in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1871, he was appointed consul general to Liberia by President Ulysses S. Grant. He relocated to Monrovia and held that post until 1878. During this time he was involved in settling the Grebo war.[4] When he returned to St. Louis, he played an essential role in helping to resettle black refugees from the ex-Confederate states in the South and in organizing blacks as a political force. He took part in the relief efforts for African-Americans who had left the South for Kansas as part of the Exoduster Movement