Daniel Rasmussen: American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt

Harvard Magazine recently wrote:

DANIEL RASMUSSEN ’09 found his senior thesis topic where the history books left off: scattered but brief references to a slave rebellion in New Orleans in 1811 piqued his interest junior year. When the history and literature concentrator realized that, with a militia of some 500 black slaves, this was the single largest and most tactically sophisticated slave revolt in American history, and that not only this fact, but the event itself, had gone largely unexamined, he knew he had his topic. The thesis went on to win a Hoopes Prize for excellence in undergraduate research, but Rasmussen wanted to make sure that the story had readers beyond the prize committee. “This is a story that needs to be told,” he says. “This is a tremendously important moment in American history, and a very important moment in African-American history. It undermines our understanding of slavery as depressing, and of the slaves as victims. These slaves were heroes.” Since graduation, Rasmussen has been working as an analyst at a private equity firm in the Boston area and devoting his free time to expanding his thesis into a book. The result, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, will be published by HarperCollins in January.

Read that full article, here. Check the accompanying blog out as well (good beginning sources for scholars).

The Help: Nonfiction from APM: The Story

For nearly two years ‘The Help’ has been on bestseller lists across the country. It’s a fictional account of African-American maids and their white employers in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 60’s. Today, Dick talks with Alma Cousin who was a real-life maid in Jackson at that time, along with Elizabeth Hays, one of the white children she cared for.

Listen to the APM podcast here.