“The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: John Jacobs and the Jacobs Family in North Carolina” A Lecture by Dr. Jonathan Schroeder Thursday, March 27th

On Thursday, March 27th, Dr. Jonathan Schroeder will give the lecture, “The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: John Jacobs and the Jacobs Family in North Carolina” at 4:00pm in the Scales Fine Arts Center, Room 102. The lecture will also feature a response from Dr. Anthony S. Parent, Jr., WFU Professor Emeritus of History.

Best known as the brother of the writer and abolitionist, Harriet Jacobs, the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, John Jacobs was the author of his own remarkable slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots. His book was lost until Dr. Jonathan Schroeder found it in a digital archive. Writing from Australia, beyond the reach of American law, Jacobs demonstrates the potential of unfiltered, uncensored, unapologetic Black writing to speak truth to power.

Jonathan Schroeder is a literary historian and a Lecturer Literary Arts & Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design.

This talk is sponsored by the WFU Department of English and the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute together: Democracy demands wisdom.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed at these events do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.