John Jea

John Jea was honored in 2008. He was known by some as the preaching sailor. John Jea’s book The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher, compiled and written by himself, was published in 1811.

John Jea was born in Africa in 1773 near Calabar in the Bight of Biafra. He and his family were kidnapped by slave traders; when he was two and a half years old he was sold into slavery in New York City along with his family, where they worked for a Dutch couple, Oliver and Angelika Triebuen. After learning to read the Bible, he was freed and eventually embarked on a journey to Boston, New Orleans, South America, and various European countries, where he worked as a preacher before finally settling in England.

Jea later published his autobiography along with poems, making him one of the first African American poets to have written an autobiography. This autobiography was largely unknown until it was rediscovered in 1983.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. has argued that Jea's autobiography forms a "missing link" between 18th century slave narratives which tended to focus on spiritual redemption and later 19th century narratives which rhetorically championed the political cause of abolition. Religious themes dominate Jea's autobiography. Indeed, Jea describes his acquisition of literacy as the result of a miraculous visit from an angel, who teaches him to read the Gospel of John. But political themes are mixed together with these religious aspects, and the work consistently argues that slavery is a fundamental injustice in need of abolition. Gates calls Jea's work "the last of the great black ‘sacred’ slave autobiographies."