Captain Paul Cuffe, Yeoman
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A Gentleman of Color
A01=Jeffrey A. Fortin
abolitionist maritime networks
abolitionist sea captain
African American Atlantic trade
African American celebrity in the 18th century
African American colonization efforts
African American education history
African American maritime history
African American Quaker history
African American shipping magnate
African American veterans of the Revolution
African Americans and the Age of Sail
African diaspora in early America
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age of Sail African American history
Author_Jeffrey A. Fortin
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Black Atlantic
Black Atlantic studies
Black business
Black entrepreneurship in early America
Black founding fathers
Black sailors in the 18th century
Black sea captains in history
Cape Cod
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HB
Category=HBJ
Category=HBJK
Category=HBTM
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTM
Category=WQH
COP=United States
Cuttyhunk Island history
Delivery_Pre-order
early American Black leaders
early American maritime trade
early back-to-Africa movement
early Black abolitionists
early Black Atlantic activism
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
first racially integrated school in America
free Black communities in early America
free Black leaders in early America
free Blacks
Freedom's Prophet
integrated school pioneer
James Forten
Julie Winch
Language_English
Manisha Sinha
maritime history of African Americans
maritime resistance to slavery
newspapers reporting on Paul Cuffe
PA=Not yet available
Paul Cuffe and systemic racism
Paul Cuffe Atlantic world
Paul Cuffe biography
Paul Cuffe genealogy research
Paul Cuffe shipping empire
Price_€20 to €50
Prince Hall
PS=Forthcoming
Quakers and abolitionism
Richard Newman
Rise to Be a People
Sierra Leon
softlaunch
The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
Thomas D. Lamont
Wampanoag and African heritage
Westport Massachusetts history
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348128
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2024
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Paul Cuffe is best understood as a member of the Black founding fathers—a group of pre-eminent African Americans who built institutions and movements during the first decades of the United States. While he is known amongst scholars, his astounding life story deserves a much wider audience. Jeffrey A. Fortin has crafted a beautiful, moving portrait of this important maritime figure that will appeal to anyone interested in early American history and who loves great story telling.
Born on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts in 1759 to a formerly enslaved African father and a Wampanoag Indian mother, Cuffe emerged from anonymity to become the most celebrated African-American sea captain during the Age of Sail. An abolitionist, veteran, and community activist, celebrity followed Cuffe as he built a shipping empire that traded both in American coastal waters and across the wider Atlantic Ocean. Cuffe and his Black crews shook the foundations of systemic racism, challenging norms by sailing into Charleston and other ports where slavery was legal, and thus demonstrating that business and profits were more powerful than social limitations. He founded America’s first racially integrated school in Westport, Massachusetts, and is considered the leader of the nation’s first back-to-Africa movement. Newspapers in England, the United States, and the Caribbean reported his whereabouts and adventures, and abolitionists hailed him for his Quaker beliefs, sobriety, and commitment to advancing opportunities for persons of African descent.
Drawing on pamphlets, letters, and other documents, and painstakingly reconstructing his genealogy, Fortin vividly describes Cuffe’s experiences and places them within the broader history of the Early Republic to help reveal the central role of African Americans in the founding of the United States. Unlike previous biographies, Fortin situates Cuffe within an Atlantic world where race and identity were fluid, and Africans and African Americans sought to build and govern a free Black nation in West Africa.
Born on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts in 1759 to a formerly enslaved African father and a Wampanoag Indian mother, Cuffe emerged from anonymity to become the most celebrated African-American sea captain during the Age of Sail. An abolitionist, veteran, and community activist, celebrity followed Cuffe as he built a shipping empire that traded both in American coastal waters and across the wider Atlantic Ocean. Cuffe and his Black crews shook the foundations of systemic racism, challenging norms by sailing into Charleston and other ports where slavery was legal, and thus demonstrating that business and profits were more powerful than social limitations. He founded America’s first racially integrated school in Westport, Massachusetts, and is considered the leader of the nation’s first back-to-Africa movement. Newspapers in England, the United States, and the Caribbean reported his whereabouts and adventures, and abolitionists hailed him for his Quaker beliefs, sobriety, and commitment to advancing opportunities for persons of African descent.
Drawing on pamphlets, letters, and other documents, and painstakingly reconstructing his genealogy, Fortin vividly describes Cuffe’s experiences and places them within the broader history of the Early Republic to help reveal the central role of African Americans in the founding of the United States. Unlike previous biographies, Fortin situates Cuffe within an Atlantic world where race and identity were fluid, and Africans and African Americans sought to build and govern a free Black nation in West Africa.
Jeffrey A. Fortin is associate professor of history at Emmanuel College. He is co-editor with Mark Meuwese of Atlantic Biographies: Individuals and Peoples in the Atlantic World, and he has published numerous articles and chapters on the Black Atlantic.
