For one hundred and sixty-nine years, a first-person slave narrative written by John Swanson Jacobs—brother of African-American abolitionist and writer Harriet Jacobs—was buried in a pile of newspapers in Australia. Jacobs’s long-lost narrative, “The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots,” is a startling and revolutionary discovery. A document like this—written by a self-emancipated ex-slave, in language charged with all that can be said about America outside America, untampered with and unedited by white abolitionists—has never been seen before. A radical abolitionist, sailor, and miner, John Jacobs has a life story that is as global as it is American.
In this talk, Schroeder, who rediscovered the narrative in 2016, discusses what it means to return John Jacobs to the heart of an America that has forgotten him.
Guests will enjoy a wine and cheese reception prior to the talk. The reception begins at 5:30 p.m., with the talk starting at 6 p.m.
Schroeder is a historian, literary critic, and lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2016, shortly after receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago, he rediscovered John Swanson Jacobs’s long-lost autobiographical slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery, in an Australian archive. Republished by The University of Chicago Press in 2024 and profiled in the New York Times, NPR, and elsewhere, his edition returns this incredible narrative to America after 169 years, and features the first full-length biography of Harriet Jacobs’s globe-spanning brother, No Longer Yours: The Lives of John Swanson Jacobs. Schroeder is also the co-editor of Ahab Unbound: Melville and the Material Turn, and the co-director of Congress of the Birds, a 501(c)3 organization that annually rescues, rehabilitates, and releases over 1,000 of Rhode Island’s native and migratory birds. The recipient of long-term fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, and the American Antiquarian Society, Schroeder is currently editing Lauren Berlant: A Reader, writing Prisoners of Loss: An Atlantic History of Nostalgia, and planning and building a 42-acre forest wildlife rehabilitation center in Chepachet, Rhode Island.
The Newell D. Goff Lecture is the Rhode Island Historical Society’s signature free talk where a scholar at the top of their field discusses a topic essential to understanding our past.
The Rhode Island Historical Society, the state's oldest and only statewide historical organization, is dedicated to honoring, interpreting and sharing Rhode Island's past to enrich the present and inspire the future. Founded in 1822, the RIHS is an advocate for history as a means to develop empathy and 21st -century skills, using its historical materials and knowledge to explore topics of timeless relevance and public interest. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, it is dedicated to providing high-quality, accessible public programming and educational opportunities for all Rhode Islanders through its four sites: the John Brown House Museum, the Museum of Work & Culture, the Mary Elizabeth Robinson Research Center and the Aldrich House.
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