Get Your Free Audiobook
-
Father James Page
- An Enslaved Preacher's Climb to Freedom
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
Failed to add items
Add to cart failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
2 credits with free trial
Buy Now for ₹703.00
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
James Page spent the majority of his life enslaved - during which time he experienced the death of his free father, witnessed his mother and brother being sold on the auction block, and was forcibly moved 700 miles south from Richmond, Virginia, to Tallahassee, Florida, by his enslaver, John Parkhill. Page would go on to become Parkhill's chief aide on his plantation and, unusually, a religious leader who was widely respected by enslaved men and women as well as by White clergy, educators, and politicians. Rare for enslaved people at the time, Page was literate - and left behind 10 letters that focused on his philosophy as an enslaved preacher and, later, as a free minister, educator, politician, and social justice advocate.
In Father James Page, Larry Eugene Rivers presents Page as a complex, conflicted man: neither a nonthreatening, accommodationist mouthpiece for white supremacy nor a calculating schemer fomenting rebellion. Rivers emphasizes Page's agency in pursuing a religious vocation, in seeking to exhibit "manliness" in the face of chattel slavery, and in pushing back against the overwhelming power of his enslaver. Post-emancipation, Page continued to preach and to advocate for Black self-determination and independence through Black land ownership, political participation, and business ownership.