UNH historian pens book on how nation denied liberty to a free black man
DURHAM — In 1775, Thomas Jeremiah was one of fewer than 500 "Free Negros" in South Carolina and possibly the richest person of African descent in British North America. A slave owner himself, Jeremiah was falsely accused by whites — who resented his success as a Charleston harbor pilot — of sowing insurrection among slaves at the behest of the British.
In the new book The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty (Yale University Press, 2009), J. William Harris, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, recounts and analyzes the trial and execution of Jeremiah and illuminates the contradiction between a nation that would be born in a struggle for freedom and yet deny it — often violently — to others.
Thomas Jeremiah's story exposes in dramatic and poignant fashion the multiple ironies of the American Revolution, when Americans fought for their own liberty while enslaving others, and when the British king, rather than the American patriots, represented true justice for many slaves and free blacks...
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In the new book The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty (Yale University Press, 2009), J. William Harris, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, recounts and analyzes the trial and execution of Jeremiah and illuminates the contradiction between a nation that would be born in a struggle for freedom and yet deny it — often violently — to others.
Thomas Jeremiah's story exposes in dramatic and poignant fashion the multiple ironies of the American Revolution, when Americans fought for their own liberty while enslaving others, and when the British king, rather than the American patriots, represented true justice for many slaves and free blacks...