Newport Gardner’s Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America - A Virtual Book Talk with Dr. Edward Andrews

Join us for a virtual book talk with Dr. Edward E. Andrews to learn more about his new book that explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this powerful book, Edward E. Andrews pieces together newspaper articles, church records, letters, and Gardner's own writings to tell the story of his life.

After acquiring his freedom via a winning lottery ticket in 1791, Gardner became a kind of Founding Father for Newport's free Black community. He established and led several Black benevolent organizations that helped the community navigate the complicated waters of freedom as Rhode Island slowly began the process of emancipation. He became a popular educator to young Black Newporters, and also emerged as a key religious figure, serving as a long-standing pillar of Newport's First Congregational Church and later founding an independent Black church in the 1820s. His final act was leading a group of about three dozen Black New Englanders to Liberia, in hopes that a new start in Africa would be better than the discrimination they faced in America.

A richly textured account, Newport Gardner's Anthem tells the story of a forgotten Black leader while exploring the new, but tragically limited, opportunities for formerly enslaved people in the post-Revolutionary world.

Email any questions to programs@14beacon.org.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Edward E. Andrews is Professor in The Department of History and Classics at Providence College. A scholar of early American history, his work focuses on questions of race, religion, and slavery in early America and the Atlantic World.  His first book, Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World, was published by Harvard University Press in 2013. His new biography, Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America, was recently released by Cornell University Press.  It tells the story of an important but forgotten African leader in early New England.