Captain Paul Cuffe, Yeoman

A Biography by Jeffrey A. Fortin

2 PM Saturday February 22 at the Westport Public library

Meet the author of a new book on Paul Cuffe published by University of Massachusetts Press. Jeffrey A. Fortin has crafted a beautiful, moving portrait of this important maritime figure. 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. 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. 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 of Atlantic Biographies: Individuals and Peoples in the Atlantic World, and he has published numerous articles and chapters on the Black Atlantic. Suggested donation $5.