PROVIDENCE, R.I. – William J. Brown led a typical life for a free Black man in 1800s Providence. He was a shoemaker and a preacher, and through his church became a leader of the city’s African-American community before dying at age 71 in 1886.
He likely would have been forgotten by history if he hadn’t written a memoir, The Life of William J. Brown of Providence, R.I., published three years before his death. The book chronicles Brown’s family history, including how his grandfather was brought to Rhode Island on a slave ship owned by the Brown family, for whom Brown University is named; the freeing of his father by abolitionist Moses Brown; and his own travels through the city, rubbing elbows with the White elite along the way.
Now, Brown’s book is at the center of a yearlong project, funded by the Rhode Island Council on the Humanities, which seeks to raise his profile and further the public’s understanding of African-American history in Rhode Island. The project will include events such as lectures and walking tours, and its organizers are asking dozens of book clubs and libraries to put the book on their reading lists this year.
Ray Rickman, a rare book dealer and history buff who is helping to lead the project, said he hopes that someday Brown’s book will become as widely read in Rhode Island as works by John Steinbeck or William Faulkner.
“There are books that are in the culture, and that’s what we’re trying to do, is get William J. Brown into the culture of Rhode Island,” Rickman said. “It is a stunning piece of historic commentary.”
Brown’s first-person narrative is among only a few dozen such narratives by so-called free people of color – African Americans who were free during the time of slavery – Rickman said. The most famous narrative was by Frederick Douglass.
Many such narratives were ghostwritten, and contemporary readers can find the style and grammar difficult, he said. Brown’s memoir is different because it is so accessible to audiences today and because, many scholars believe, it was likely written by him, said Morgan Grefe, a historian who oversees education and public programs at the Rhode Island Historical Society.
