{"id":38389,"date":"2014-11-18T19:41:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T19:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38389"},"modified":"2014-11-18T19:41:03","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T19:41:03","slug":"william-wells-brown-by-ezra-greenspan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38389","title":{"rendered":"\u2018William Wells Brown,\u2019 by Ezra Greenspan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018William Wells Brown,\u2019 by Ezra Greenspan<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\nSunday Book Review<\/a>
\n2014-11-14<\/p>\n

Nell Irvin Painter<\/strong><\/a>, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita
\nPrinceton University<\/em><\/p>\n

Greenspan, Ezra, William Wells Brown: An African American Life<\/a><\/em> (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the publishing industry reflects the American zeitgeist<\/a>, things have changed when it comes to black American historical figures. As a graduate student at Harvard decades ago, I came across William Wells Brown<\/a>, the fugitive slave, abolitionist, lecturer, travelogue writer, novelist and performer whose wide-ranging intelligence turned a gaze on white people (for a change). Back then he was to be found in only one full-length biography, William Edward Farrison\u2019s \u201cWilliam Wells Brown: Author and Reformer\u201d (1969). Published by the University of Chicago Press in the twilight of the \u201csecond Reconstruction\u201d and at the dawning of African-American studies, it depicted Brown as a representative black American. In the absence of the biographical scholarship coming after 1969, Brown\u2019s colleagues remained ill defined. Farrison\u2019s biography was reviewed only in publishing trade papers and a couple of history journals. What was the problem?<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t Brown\u2019s lack of an interesting life: more on that momentarily. The main problem was that 20th-century American culture accommodated only one 19th-\u00adcentury black man, a spot already taken by the monumental, best-selling Frederick Douglass<\/a>. Another problem was theoretical: Farrison published his biography before the flowering of two other fields crucial to a full appreciation of Brown\u2019s public life \u2014 the history of the book and performance art…<\/p>\n

…The child who would be William Wells Brown was born enslaved in Kentucky<\/a>, in about 1814, the son of his owner\u2019s cousin. In St. Louis<\/a>, given the job of tending a young charge also called William, his name was changed to Sandford with the carelessness characteristic of slave naming. As Sandford he worked in his owner\u2019s medical office and on the Mississippi River\u2019s<\/a> ships and docks. After several unsuccessful attempts at escape, one with his mother, he finally fled St. Louis at about age 19. He retook his own name William and added Wells Brown in honor of the Quaker<\/a> who had rescued him from starving and freezing in Ohio<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018William Wells Brown,\u2019 by Ezra Greenspan The New York Times Sunday Book Review 2014-11-14 Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita Princeton University Greenspan, Ezra, William Wells Brown: An African American Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) If the publishing industry reflects the American zeitgeist, things have changed when it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,5,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[17975,1231,2640,2327,482],"class_list":["post-38389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-ezra-greenspan","tag-nell-irvin-painter","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-william-wells-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}