Jemima Wilkinson, born in 1752, was a devout Quaker and skilled medical practitioner in colonial Rhode Island. When a typhus outbreak in 1776 left her feverish and near death, she experienced a series of dramatic religious visions. When the fever finally cleared, the person who rose from Wilkinson’s sickbed declared that Jemima Wilkinson was gone (dead?) and had been replaced by Publick Universal Friend, a genderless evangelist who would become a wildly influential and popular preacher throughout New England. Publick Universal Friend would launch a completely unique (and distinctly American) religious movement, and Friend’s teachings and social influence would permanently shift American views on religion, slavery, race, gender and colonialism. Yet somehow Wilkinson and Friend were nearly forgotten to history until our guest Michael Bronski “reintroduced” the world to this fascinating enigma of a story.

A full transcript of this episode is available here.

Guest Michael Bronski is an independent scholar, journalist, writer and long time activist. He is Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media in the Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. His Queer History of the United States won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Best Non-Fiction as well as the 2011 American Library Association Stonewall Israel Fishman Award for Best Non-Fiction. In 2017 he was awarded the awarded the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle. Past recipients include Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Martin Duberman, Samuel R. Delany, and Alison Bechdel. His A Queer History of the United States for Young People was published in 2019.

Music for this episode was provided by Andy Reiner, Robert Stoddard and Boston Sing.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices