Memoir of James Jackson, The Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months, By His Teacher
This fascinating little book is a two-for-one: it offers a remarkably instructive, 63-page introductory essay by Brown (English, Mount Holyoke Coll.) and a 66-page biography written in 1835 as a didactic spiritual narrative--a work of evangelical juvenilia--by Paul (1809-1841), then the 26-year-old daughter of a leading black New England family. Paul was a family friend who taught James Jackson (1827-33) in Boston's segregated Primary School Number 6 and in Sunday school at the Belknap Street Church, the first black Baptist church in the North. Paul's extended eulogy unveils a black child's socialization at home, church, and school in the 1830s--a process too rarely glimpsed in any documented detail. Brown's adept annotations combine with her introduction and Paul's text to produce an explication and exposition that command attention from a wide range of scholars and general readers interested in African Americans, women's studies, children's literature, social history, regional history, the antebellum era, and more. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., TempeCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.