Via Hid­den City blog, I’ve learned of a new pod­cast called Found in Philadel­phia. It’s only one episode long so far but it’s a good one: a look at the Ger­man­town Protest of 1688. This was the let­ter writ­ten by four Dutch and Ger­man Quak­ers protest­ing slave­hold­ing — in par­tic­u­lar, slave­hold­ing as prac­ticed by lead­ing Philadel­phia Friends. The lan­guage and dic­tion is a bit awk­ward (Eng­lish not being their first lan­guage) but many of their argu­ments are sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern. The next time some tire­some bot on Twit­ter or Face­book friend-of-a-friend starts whin­ing about how times were dif­fer­ent in the past and how were peo­ple to know slav­ery was so bad, just show them this let­ter. Clear-eyed peo­ple knew and spoke up.

Host Lori Aument inter­views two peo­ple known to Friends Jour­nal read­ers: Katharine Gerb­n­er, author of September’s Slav­ery in the Quak­er World; and Mary Crauderu­eff, who last wrote for us in Novem­ber 2017. I’m a big fan of uncov­er­ing the sto­ries of the 1688 protest, espe­cial­ly the dis­missal it received from Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. My review of Gerbner’s book will appear in the Jan­u­ary books sec­tion of FJ.

Episode No. 1 – The Ger­man­town Protest of 1688