After fleeing slavery in 1839, abolitionist, miner and sailor John Swanson Jacobs embarked on a journey that would take him to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and ultimately Australia. It was there that he published his life story in a local newspaper – a unique document that not only gave an account of his experience under enslavement, but also named his enslavers, criticized America’s founding documents, and called out the American citizens who allowed slavery to persist. A new book shares his manuscript in full, accompanied by a biography of Jacobs. It’s called “The True Story of Slavery: The United States Governed by Six Thousand Despots.” Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with the book’s editor, Jonathan Schroeder, a literary historian at the Rhode Island School of Design.
slavery
Posted inArticle, Arts And Culture
Confronting Slavery’s Hidden History In RI’s South County
Rhode Island’s outsized role in slavery isn’t such a hidden secret anymore. In recent decades, prominent families have helped unearth the truth about ancestors who were slave traders. Brown University and the Episcopal Diocese, among others, now acknowledge they benefited from slavery. But less attention has been paid so far to the historic plantation economy of South County, R.I. Now a group of historians and volunteers wants to change that.
Posted inEpisode
Ep. 16: God’s Little Acre
Part II of the Aaron Lopez saga brings us to a burial ground in Newport, where headstones give us insight into the lives of enslaved and free Africans in colonial Rhode Island.
Posted inArts And Culture, Artscape, Episode
Artscape – Slavery’s Hinterlands Symposium
Rhode Island’s role in the slave trade, plus an arts festival in New Bedford.