Re-collecting Jim. Discovering a name and a slave narrative's continuing truth

In a follow-up installment in 1839 to the anonymously authored Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave, the narrator testifies that a Charleston slave speculator known as "Major Ross" had sold his brother. The narrator notes that Ross lives in "a nice little white house, on the right hand side of King street as you go in from the country towards the market." The right-hand side? Was that level of precision necessary? Because people challenged the veracity of slave narratives at the time they were published, details mattered very much. But the level of specificity in this instance caught my eye. The facts were borne out: property records in the Charleston County Register Mesne Conveyance Deeds office show that in 1831, a James L. Ross, known also as "Major Ross," purchased a house situated on the west side of King Street, just a few blocks north of the market. If you were entering the city of Charleston from the country, Ross' house would indeed have been on the right-hand side (fig 1). And so it comes down to that. In order to prove his own humanity, the truth about the human capacity for cruelty, and the very reputation of abolitionist crusaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, this survivor made his story unassailable by giving the correct location for the speculator's house on King Street in Charleston

A Corrupt Medium: Stephen Burroughs and the Bridgehampton, New York, Library

In his eighteenth-century Memoirs, criminal Stephen Burroughs tells of his campaign to establish a library in Bridgehampton, New York. When the town elders discover the plan, they insist upon reviewing Burroughs's choices. Undercurrents of other debates spill over into what would otherwise merely be some quibbling over book selections. In a series of vividly recounted public meetings, Burroughs pits the local elders against himself and "the People." These book wars are clearly situated in ideological struggles regarding rationalism and the role of reading in general; but, more significantly, they are situated in a representational context that by its very genre—that of the rogue narrative—calls into question the role of individual interpretation and literary influence

Du Bois's Horizon: Documenting Movements of the Color Line

This article examines W. E. B. Du Bois' work with The Horizon, an early African American Magazine

Jackson Unchained: Reclaiming a Fugitive Landscape

Slaves were allowed three day's holiday at Christmas time, and so it was over Christmas that John Andrew Jackson decided to escape. The first day I devoted to bidding a sad, though silent farewell to my people; for I did not even dare to tell my father or mother that I was going, lest for joy they should tell some one else. Early next morning, I left them playing their "fandango" play. I wept as I looked at them enjoying their innocent pay, and thought it was the last time I should ever see them, for I was determined never to return alive. To run by day or by night? To flee on a road or in the woods? To rely upon subterfuge or unadulterated boldness? These were life-or-death decisions for a fugitive slave. When John Andrew Jackson fled a Sumter District plantation in South Carolina, he made strategic choices for his survival. he had a pony and rode mostly on roads, talking his way out of confrontations. Jackson gambled on his plausibility and charm. Most of all, he clung to a faith in his ability to mislead others with his own imagination. He crafted his own terrain

Review of Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880

The introductory note encapsulates the premise and problems with which An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 grapples. Gutjahr writes: The Bible is a unique book in Western Culture, reflected by the frequent capitalization of the word Bible in general usage. I differ slightly from this practice - by capitalizing the word Bible only when I refer to the work itself, but not when I speak of Bibles collectively (xiii)

Playing Hell in Charleston - Daniel Payne, Clementa Pinckney and the fight against White Supremacy

The men and women massacred while studying the Bible the other night in the Emanuel A. M. E. Church were, in their own way, raising hell. That phrase might seem ill conceived or even disrespectful but it can be invoked here to honor their courage and the A. M. E Church’s long tradition of challenging white supremacy. Their private prayer this week was political simply because their mere existence challenged racial power. There is a long contextual history of race violence in America which gives us tools to see this event clearly but even more than that, there is a history that is deeply specific to both place and to that phrase

Slaves of Charleston

The Beth Elohim Synagogue, founded in the 1749 in downtown Charleston South Carolina, is one of the very earliest synagogues in America. While other more recent synagogues and congregations are also now a part of Charleston city life, as the oldest one in the area, the Beth Elohim Synagogue is the repository for certain historical artifacts of Jewish life in the city. One such artifact they hold is a marble tablet honoring Mordecai Cohen (1763-1848) that was commissioned by the City of Charleston to honor one of the city’s greatest benefactors. Cohen, one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina, had long supported and donated money to the Charleston Orphan’s House – the first public orphanage in the United States and one that relied upon both public funds and private patrons to serve the white poor of the city of all faiths. Mordecai Cohen served as a commissioner to the Orphan’s House for ten years and made hefty contributions for forty-five years

Why Should a Library Invest in You? or, How to Succeed with Short-Term Library and Archival Fellowship Grants

Short term library fellowships are quite likely the single most common kind of national research grant given out to scholars in the humanities. The Massachusetts Historical Society alone gives out twenty short- term library fellowships. Almost ev-ery major private university and scholarly library (including the Huntington, New-berry, Yale’s Beinecke, Harvard’s Houghton, and the New- York Historical Society), many public universities (such as the University of Texas, Austin), many major pub-lic libraries (such as the Boston Public Library and the New York Public Library), and many small specialized research libraries administrate these types of grants

Slavery, Imprinted: The Life and Narrative of William Grimes

In 1824, in a fury over the injustices of slavery, racism in the North, and exploitation of the workingman, William Grimes wrote the story of his life. The Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave (1825) ends with a visceral and violent image of literary sacrifice: Grimes offers to skin himself in order to authorize the national story of the United States: If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave, I would in my will leave my skin as a legacy to the gover(n)ment, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment, and then bind the constitution of glorious, happy, and free America. Let the skin of an American slave bind the charter of American liberty