The Memoir of James Jackson, The Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months [Paperback]

The design of this Memoir is, to present the incidents in the life of a little colored boy. So begins the life story of James Jackson, as set down by his African American teacher, Susan Paul, in 1835, as an example to other children and adults who might learn from the boys goodness.This remarkable documentthe first African American biography and a work that predates Harriet Jacobss Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by almost thirty yearsis a lost treasure from the annals of African American history. With its combination of eyewitness accounts, personal testimony, and excerpts from traditional Sunday school texts, the memoir is an extraordinary social history rooted in both nineteenth-century evangelicalism and the experiences of free African Americans.Susan Pauls portrayal of James Jacksons Christian sensibility, his idealism, and his racial awareness emphasizes his humanity and exemplary American character over his racial identity, even as it embeds him in his African American community.Fortunately now restored to publication, this significant cultural artifact still makes meaningful reading today. Paul was a young black teacher in Boston who, when she published an account of one of her little students in 1835 titled Memoir of James Jackson, made history as the author of the first African American biography& The Memoir itself is a heartfelt profile, easy to immerse oneself into, and from it the contemporary reader not only meets a special child but also gathers information on black education in the antebellum North.The Memoir of James Jackson is a significant antebellum biographical narrative because it documents the interior life of a black male child in a way that had never been done previously. It illuminates and emancipates James's subjugated spiritual and intellectual 'voice,' serving as a reminder that the complex experiences and voices of black children, both past and present, are often silenced and neglected. Thus, the Memoir offers a valuable clc"