to 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 in 2013. His new biography, Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America, reveals the remarkable history of an important but forgotten African leader in early New England.
Andrews applied the “Page 99 Test” to Newport Gardner's Anthem, and reported the following:
Flipping to page 99 of Newport Gardner’s Anthem will reveal two of the major themes of the book: struggle and survival. A formerly enslaved African living in post-Revolutionary Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Gardner became a key leader, organizer, and activist for a community that had been historically oppressed and marginalized. In these pages we see Gardner’s struggles to keep a school running for Black children in the first decades of the nineteenth century, as well as his crucial role as a leader in the town.Learn more about Newport Gardner's Anthem at the Cornell University Press website.
Newport Gardner helped to found the African Benevolent Society in 1808, an organization primarily dedicated to the education of the people of color in the town of Newport. Not only did Gardner serve as president of this Society for years on end, but he was also one of the teachers in this promising school. But, as page 99 makes clear, the school had a rocky history. Opening with excitement and optimism, by the late 1810s the Society barely had enough money to keep it going. They even shuttered it temporarily and used the meager funds left over in the treasury to pay for private tutors instead. By the early 1820s it was back in action, but by that point Gardner was also looking to other reform projects, like creating a free Black church and, eventually, emigration to Liberia.
So, yes, the Page 99 Test works rather well for Newport Gardner’s Anthem, as we witness Gardner’s struggles to help his community survive in a city that offered no public education for Black children, dismal economic prospects, and limited civic rights. It highlights Gardner’s critical role as a Black leader in the region and foreshadows some of the other initiatives he will take on – church building and African emigration – towards the end of his long, fascinating life.
--Marshal Zeringue
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