Robert J. Moody was an important post-Civil War Black educator, born to Daniel, an enslaved man, and Jane Freeman, a free woman of mixed race. He farmed as a free man with his mother in Dyer County, and they hired his enslaved father as labor. After Disciples of Christ ministers converted the family, Moody attended a Disciples school for Blacks in Nashville in 1855 until the city closed it in 1856. He finished his education at Buxton Mission School in Canada before returning to Dyer County and purchasing his father at auction in 1858. He freed his father, who moved to Canada, but Moody stayed to try to purchase and free Sarah McDamond, who became his legally recognized wife in 1866. During the Civil War, he traveled to Union lines at Trenton, then to Cairo, Illinois, to go to Canada, returning after the war to Michigan. From 1873 to 1880, Moody was an impactful educator and missionary in Dyer County. He moved to Illinois in 1880 and worked there as a teamster and farmer for the rest of his life.