The Narrative of Primus

My original intent with this book was to ensure the words of Primus were available to all. I wanted people to hear his emotion during his capture in The Gambia and his mother's screams as her son was being torn from her arms. I wanted people to hear him speak about the stench of the air and the feeling of suffocation below deck on the slave ship. I wanted people to feel his emotion when his father died on the slave ship, his father's last words being, “Come with me my son, to the fields of pure light, where [there] are no white men, no slaves.“ I wanted people to feel his emotions when hearing the bodies being thrown overboard. Finally, I wanted people to know about his arrival in New York and his transport to Norwich, CT, where he would live out his life.

I then realized people should also know about his son, Job, who served in the Revolutionary War while enslaved. People should know about his daughter, Flora... a Black woman who dared to challenge inequity, and was then demeaned for it. They should know about Job's great grandsons, Daniel Lathrop and Thomas Lathrop, who fought with the 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment during the Civil War. People should know about Daniel being turned away from the Connecticut National Guard for being Black even after returning a Civil War hero. People should know about the 14 years it took after the Civil War for Black people to be allowed in the Connecticut National Guard. People should know about Daniel Lathrop's son who served during World War I; and about the U.S. Government exposing their long-standing policies towards Black service men to the French government, telling the French to never celebrate Black servicemen as it makes white men feel bad about themselves.

So, all of the above became part of my book. Universities and history organizations have already begun to add it to their collections, including Brown University and the Schomburg Center in New York.

If interested, you can pre-order my book on Amazon HERE.

God Bless.

John