When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of experiences that were worth living and talking about.

Tara Bynum, an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and the author of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, joins us to explore the lives of four early Black American writers: Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, James Albert Unkawsaw Groniosaw, and David Walker.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/378

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 025: Inventing George Whitefield 

🎧 Episode 083: Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston

🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island

🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances

🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 328: Free People of Color in Early America

🎧 Episode 360: Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts

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