NEWBURYPORT — A.E. Rooks, author of “The Black Joke: the True Story of One Ship’s Battle Against the Slave Trade,” will visit “The Morning Show” on Thursday, April 21, to preview her upcoming presentation at the Newburyport Literary Festival.
Host Mary Jacobsen will interview Rooks about the clipper ship’s mission as part of the British Royal Navy’s antislavery suppression squadron.
Initially a slaving vessel itself, the ship was captured and repurposed in 1827, and over the next five years captured more ships and liberated more enslaved people than any other ship in the squadron.
The story of the clipper ship Black Joke, Rooks has said, is a “history in miniature of the demise of global slave trading,” one that is “harrowing and heartbreaking, both as a reckoning with slavery and abolition and as a lesson about the power of political will — or the lack thereof.”
Rooks will present at the festival on Sunday, May 1, at 9 a.m. For information and to register, visit www.newburyportliteraryfestival.org.
“The Morning Show” airs Thursday at 9 a.m. on Channel 9 and WJOP (FM 96.3). This pre-recorded interview will also be available at 9 a.m. on YouTube (at NCMHub.org). After broadcast, click Playlist on YouTube and scroll down.
